Zombie Horror Chiller (Youngblood) Theatre

So these kids in the nice suburban neighborhood get caught up in a multi-player internet game about zombies running amok among kids in a nice suburban neighborhood much — very much — like their own.

You see where this is going, right? Not so fast, says Benjamin James Wilson, director of Youngblood Theatre’s production of Jennifer Haley’s Neighborhood 3, Requisition of Doom. It opens Friday (April 27).

“I had to read it over and over again to see exactly what this play is,” Wilson said, in an interview in the basement of the Miller and Campbell Costume company. A crew was busy transforming the rough space into a theater, including a basement rec room where a kid is glued to his computer.

“The idea behind the game,” Wilson said, “is that you have to kill zombies and escape from your neighborhood. And with Google maps and imaging, you can play in your own neighborhood. It’s like an episode of The Twilight Zone. There’s the game and there’s real life. The audience has to figure out which is which. The trick is to be mysterious but not confusing. This play is mysterious. It’s also funny.”

Beyond that, the structure of Haley’s play appeals to Wilson, who is a playwright himself. Four actors (Mother Type, Father Type, Daughter Type, Son Type) play three or four roles each to show us several families residing in Sunnyvale Acres. It’s an upscale island, rather isolated from the city around it.

Speedy costume changes abound.

“Costumes help define characters, and their choices and motivations help to show who’s who,” Wilson said.

One thing Neighborhood 3 is not, Wilson assures us, is a cautionary sermon about the dangers of computer games.

“This play is really good at building tension and anticipation,” Wilson said. “You get the feeling that two days after the action of the play, Muldur and Scully will show up to figure out what happened. You can almost hear the playwright’s thought process. It begins with ‘What if we played a video game about our own neighborhood?’ and it turns into a play about parents’ relations with their teen children.”

Still, don’t bring your 12 year-old.

“We have stage blood,” Wilson said. “And rough language, adult themes and hard violence.”

You know — all the things we love about video games. Plus, hedge clippers, the big ones. But no hedges.

Ticket Info: Neighborhood 3 runs April 27 to May 12, with all shows at 8 p.m. in the basement of Miller and Campbell Costume Services in Walker’s Point, 907 S. 1st St. Tickets are $15 and can be ordered at the online box office.