Anybody have opinions on Gruesome Playground Injuries, A Small Fire, or the new Adam Rapp trilogy? — Page 2

I'm with you stagemanager3. I felt like I was watching the same scene over and over again, with little change other than an overhead caption substituting for character growth. It wasn't the actors fault, but it felt like an acting class exercise, and not one that was going to score anybody an "A".

i saw "injuries" this weekend and it was in my top 5 of "worst things i have seen in nyc"

The acting of Jennifer was atrocious. Being young doesn't not mean acting like you have a mental problem. I really thought she was a mentally disturbed person at the beginning of the show.

Can someone tell me the point of the show? That one person is hurting inside while the other is hurting outside? Why are they friends anyway? in every scene she is just awful to him. Why would he be friends with her? Pick a new friend who doesn't say "get out of here" every time you hang out with them. Or is he a savior who is trying to rescue her from herself? Does he hurt himself so she will be near him? WHO CARES!
this show was just awful.

Okay, I'll try to address some of the questions posed here, although they may be rhetorical...Doug and Kayleen are walking wounded, human train wrecks who desperately need to heal each other and don't know how. If they felt they were worthy of love and could accept it, then they wouldn't even be in the positions they're in. The miracle would be for them to be able to do that, and Joseph ends the play with the hope that finally, they just might. Their backstories are left vague, but there's no doubt from the pain they've inflicted on themselves over the years, that their own families of origin would have had to be deeply dysfunctional.

Now whether or not that makes moving, illuminating theater is a personal thing; but psychologically, the characters seem to make perfect sense to me--if you figure that they've both been pretty much damaged goods from childhood on. I was touched by their pain and their plight, but that doesn't mean you have to be.

If anyone's interested, the NYTimes review of Gruesome Playground Injuries is out.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/theater/reviews/01gruesome.html?smid=tw-nytimesTheater