Disaffected, disoriented, disenchanted and disheartened, but never disconnected, the young people of "Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom" offer a fearsome picture of a future- perhaps a near one. The drama, by West Coast playwright Jennifer Haley, is a Hot City Theatre production that opened on Saturday. It is an interesting evening, and "interesting," in this case, is a compliment and not an occasion of damning with faint praise. It will run at the Kranzberg Center through Oct. 4.
We're in a modern subdivision where a Boy Type (Greg Fenner) and a Girl Type (Maggie Conroy) are involved in a computer game with other neighborhood teenagers, a game complex and fear-inducing enough that participation is the most important thing in their lives, enough to cause them to ignore and flee from their parents, known as a Father Type (John Pierson) and a Mother Type (Pamela Reckamp).
A deep, disembodied voice gives the game instructions and the Boy and the Girl follow them, pursuing whatever winning techniques are necessary.
Chuck Harper's direction was right-on, on Mark Wilson's runway-style set that divides the audience. It's an interesting concept, but one or another of the actors, primarily the younger, less experienced ones, is sometimes difficult to understand because he (or she) is speaking away from half the audience. Scott Breihan's costumes are effective, Sean Savoie's lighting design is properly eerie and keeps the on-edge mood that Harper, who also designed the sound, has created.
Both Pierson and Reckamp are excellent in finding the frustration that too-often possesses parents when their children are obsessed by something their elders don't understand, and Fenner and Conroy nicely display that obsession, and its cousin, the need for expression in the crassest, most off-putting vocabulary.
Still, Haley's play, generally well-written, piques one's curiosity and interest.
At the Kranzberg Black Box, Grand and Olive, through Oct. 4
–Joe