Over 30 years calamities and physical injuries bring two people a strong mutual emotional connection. They first meet at age eight in a school nurse’s office, where they begin to explore their hurts. Similar meetings become a kind of routine along with missed connections between and during them. A set backed by hospital screens is appropriate and functional. The play is supposed to be a dark comedy but there are only a few comic bits and a dramatic rather than happy ending. The meeting scenes are not chronological, as in the manner of so many recent plays. The whole is closest in substance to a series of acting scenes plotted around a relationship theme. Injured boy keeps meeting injured girl, although at least once, he is pretty much unconscious of it. Luckily, Anna Newbury does an excellent job of conveying physical mishaps as a manifestation of mental illness. Alex Rodriguez is outstanding as an unrequited lover, always sustaining wounds. Ashley Teague has directed their characters to be both pitiful and pitiable. The two actors manage that as well as the moving backward and forward in time with onstage costume and age changes. Costumes and make-up are important and lights effective in changing scenes. Sound and microphone announcements help. There’s efficient movement by three students handling props and furniture. That’s a plus in a play that might have been just as effective presented chronologically instead of in an unconventional sequence that seems to be becoming conventional.
