Kara Young and Nicholas Braun Photo by Emilio Madrid

The 90-minute two-hander, of which its original 2011 Off-Broadway production was basically brushed off as a lesser work by the writer of the even more gruesomely comic Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, stars the tag team of Kara Young (brilliant, but when is this two-time Tony winner not?) and Nicholas Braun, the perfect yang to Young's yin, a point that is further emphasized when they embrace or dance together by the very obvious difference in their respective heights: the big friendly giant and his diminutive partner. In their hands and under Neil Pepe's direction, there is nothing "lesser" about Gruesome Playground Injuries, which is being mined for every bit of affliction and unbreakable attachment that can be mustered about a pair whose enduring tie borrows from but ultimately sideswipes what passes for love in the usual romcom manner.

There are times when Gruesome Playground Injuries resembles in tone and style one of Christopher Durang's morbidly funny plays. The Marriage of Bette and Boo comes to mind, with its appalling, yet somehow laugh-inducing depiction of the breakdown of the family unit.

Structurally, the two playwrights develop their tales of dysfunction through the use of multiple short scenes that carry their characters across three decades of their lives. But there the resemblance ends. Whereas Durang leans into outrageous farce, Joseph digs into the complexity of a co-dependent bond against a backdrop of mental and physical pain.

We first meet the pair, Kayleen (Young) and Doug (Braun), when they both are eight years old and in the nurse's suite at their Catholic elementary school. Doug's "gruesome playground injury" is quite visible, as his face is wrapped in a blood-stained bandage. "I get cut all the time," he says matter-of-factly in what turns out to be quite the understatement. As for Kayleen, her pronouncement is delivered in the same tone: "I have a stomach ache. My mom says it's because I have bad thoughts."

While this introduction to one another is dealt with dispassionately and in the course of a random conversation between two kids who meet up by chance, both of these statements set the tone for a deepening personal relationship that is captured in a series of eight scenes, told out of chronological order but which together create an increasingly complex portrait of Kayleen and Doug as we meet up with them in various clinical settings between the ages of 8 and 38.

The ways in which they return to each other, even when there are long intervals during which they are out of touch, make for a remarkable story of a remarkable sort of relationship, in which love is measured out through episodes of affliction and endurance. We may not see ourselves in them, but they are nonetheless believable, thanks to the smart pairing of Kara Young and Nicholas Braun and the quality of their work together.

An interesting side note on the staging, which is specified in the script. Arnulfo Maldonado's set design consists of two hospital beds, a couple of working sinks, and a few props. The performers themselves handle all of the rearranging of these between scenes, and they also change outfits and bandages as needed in full view of the audience, perhaps with the intention of helping us grasp the passage of time and their transitions to different ages. It's an interesting approach that certainly saves money on production costs, but I'm not sure it helps us to understand the characters any better. Still and all, it's hard to imagine a better production of this most unconventional love story.