Shaw Jones and Craig Taggart Photo by Russ Rowland

The generically titled Wounded is an expansion of a one-act play that had previously played in last year's SoHo Playhouse International Fringe Encore Theater Series. Presented as two acts in the new iteration, each part could stand on its own.

The greatly inferior first act takes place in a Texas suburban park and focuses on mother-daughter relationships. As the play begins, Katie (Kristen McCullough) settles into her favorite spot with her 13-year-old daughter Elizabeth, who is profoundly disabled. Elizabeth, whom Katie refers to as Sparrow, was struck by a drunk driver a few years before and is now in a wheelchair and unable to speak.

Katie's mother, for reasons that are not satisfactorily explained, is also in the park and monitoring from afar her daughter's care of her grandchild. Rather than confront her daughter directly, she phones Katie every few minutes to badger and harangue her. Adding to the stressfulness of the park outing, Carrol assumes his place on the park bench, which he claims is his accustomed oasis as well. Judgements hurl, fur flies, and Katie (again, implausibly) even threatens to pull a gun on him if he doesn't vacate the public space. Gradually, however, the pair find comfort in each other's company, and they reveal the depths of their psychological pain to one another and become fast friends. Think I'm Not Rappaport in miniature.

The second act takes place on the back porch of Carrol's house. (Evan Frank designed the minimal set, which doubles for a park backdrop and suburban home. Adam Matthew's sound and Carter O. Ford's lighting also help to distinguish the different locales.) Carrol has prepared enough food for at least twenty (and he experiences an acute eating disorder, which is linked to his own wounded psyche), but he is just expecting one visitor, Robert (Shaw Jones).

Robert is an old school friend of Carrol's, and he had at one time showed a great deal of promise as a graduate of Baylor, a Baptist university in Waco, Texas. More recently, Robert has returned to his hometown to care for his aging and ill parents. Trying to get back on his feet, he has struggled with alcohol addiction and is currently on parole for drunk driving. Also gay, he hopes that Carrol might provide both financial and emotional support. Over the course of the evening, the two men flirt, snipe, and confront their fraught histories, which involve a fair number of twists and turns (which will not be revealed here).

Directed by Del Shores, the actors do fine work. As Katie, McCullough manages to make her character likeable even though she casually tosses off hoary homophobic remarks. She's also saddled with a strained Tennessee Williams-like monologue in which she compares her daughter Sparrow to a painful childhood memory. Still, there are moments in which the performer conveys the character's intense inner suffering, and it's quite moving especially as she considers the life she might have had.

Jones has a more difficult role in the part of Robert, who spends much of his stage time reacting to Carrol. Nevertheless, he effectively conveys the essence of a lost soul, and the sense of unhappiness and unfulfillment are palpable.

Admittedly, I was initially put off by the over-the-top presentation of Carrol. He is described in the script "as if Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Leslie Jordan had all attended the same orgy and spawned this strange creature." With a satchel full of Twinkies, Cheetos, and Slim Jims in the first act, and tables full of appetizers, cakes, and macaroons in the second, he is almost constantly eating. As a result, there is something grotesque about the character. But to his credit, Taggart completely and wholeheartedly leans into this grotesquerie. In the process, he reveals the humanity underneath. He is particularly excellent negotiating the power struggle between the two men, and the playlet hearkens back to the early works of gay playwrights like Lanford Wilson and Robert Patrick.

In terms of character and construction, Wounded is certainly old-fashioned. Still, particularly in the second act, Burgess and Taggart find ways to make familiar tropes sting, exposing just under the surface the enduring traumas that queer people continue to face.