Broadway World - Highly Recommended
"...Rajiv Joseph's very tricky to pull off GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES lands at the Hudson Backstage as a stunning success! Considering the main conceit of GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES requires two actors playing a 30-year age range from 8 to 38; in less capable hands, this seventy-minute one-act would have been so ripe for missteps."
LA Splash - Recommended
"...GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES is an intriguing study of what makes - or breaks - relationships. How they grow or wither; how they develop or end. Kayleen and Doug are two average people who are probably looking for that special someone. Finding love shouldn't be so hard, should it? Even when one of them wants to make a commitment, the other isn't interested. They can't seem to get their timing right. Will both of them ever be ready for a relationship at the same time? You'll have to see the play to find out."
ReviewPlays.com - Recommended
"...While not exactly a "feel-good" story it is a deeply insightful look at how some people who start out with a bright promise of a future can be side-tracked by family, by abuse or by circumstances that they are not able to cope with or understand."
Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...There are eight scenes in all, each performed superlatively by Sara Rae Foster and Jeff ward. Throughout it is made obvious to the audience that there is indeed some magic chemistry between the two characters. It becomes equally as obvious that particularly Kayleen denies that chemistry up until the very end."
Will Call - Recommended
"...Performances are exquisite. Foster's Kayleen hides a multitude of problems, both mental and physical. Ward's ebullient acting matches his personality. We know from the get-go that they have feelings for one another but years of intermittent separations and life's vagaries keep romance at bay. Joseph's dialogue is uncanny in its nuances, authentic as expressed by the youngsters, poignant and often funny in later years. Director John Hindman's expert eye and ear serve the actors well. They are completely believable and so natural, one forgets that they are on a stage. My only gripe is that the program contains bios for the stage manager, prop master, sound and lighting designers etc. - even their excellent press rep, Lucy Pollak, gets a paragraph but not even one word about the award-winning, talented playwright, Rajiv Joseph? A shame!"
Living Out Loud Los Angeles - Highly Recommended
"...In "Gruesome Playground Injuries," directed by John Hindman and starring Sara Rae Foster (Showtime's "Masters of Sex") and Jeff Ward (Lifetime's Manson's Lost Girls), two childhood friends so different they fit perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle. Kayleen (Foster) and Doug (Ward) face 30 years of growing pains - from the elementary school playground to their respective middle ages - and never quite grow up."
Night Tinted Glasses - Highly Recommended
"...Kayleen and Doug, as the title suggests, suffer injuries. Most of Doug's are on his body, one way or another. Most of Kayleen's end up on her soul. Mostly. For both of them. At times it seems creepy, or tragic. Other times the whole thing seems funny ("Struck by LIGHTNING?"). But from the very most basic start, when the two are just children at Catholic School, we sense the connection. We may not understand it. They almost certainly do not. But these two actors show it, breathe it, live it for those ninety minutes. Childhood to middle age. Optimism to despair and back again. Fearlessness and desperate endurance, rage and gratitude, denial as well as terrified truth-telling. It hurt to watch. And felt wonderful. More, I at least could not look away."
Theatre Notes - Highly Recommended
"...Rajiv Joseph is one of the best rising playwrights in America. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the Broadway production Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo that starred Robin Williams. I have reviewed many of his plays including the terrific world premiere production of his psychological thriller The North Pool at TheatreWorks. His 2009 Off Broadway hit Gruesome Playground Injuries is currently playing in a sterling production at The Hudson Theatres."
Discover Hollywood - Recommended
"...Sara Rae Foster brings a tough loner exterior with a hint that there is so much more depth to the character of Kayleen while Jeff Ward brings this fun-loving daredevil with this heart of gold emotion to Doug. Each vignette flows from one age to another, though not in order of age but in an order that builds the story and helps the audience to connect with each character as they progress. The costume changes and injury makeup is done right in front of the audience and the fact that the two actors help each other through each set change and each costume change, helps to establish the connection that they have onstage as these two children who grow up together and are there for each other through each and every injury. It is fitting too, that the same two actors play each character from age 8 to 38 because they never quite grow up as they seem to remain stuck in those early Gruesome Playground Injuries that brought the two of them together and a friendship that will last forever."
Colorado Boulevard - Highly Recommended
"...Doug and Kayleen's situations give the audience plenty of opportunities to connect and relate to the issues that appear throughout their lives, and it's easy to get absorbed in their chapters as your own memories insist on creeping in and saying "remember when you........" as you watch the saga unfold."
Peoples World - Recommended
"...Running about an hour and a half, GPI is a tour de force for the two actors who must stumble through just about every life-sucking experience known to the modern world. They do so with admirable versatility and range."