Youngblood Theatre’s Smart Horror Show

Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom is the name of both Jennifer Haley’s play and the fiendishly realistic digital game that drives the action of the play. Youngblood Theatre opened the 2009 play Friday. The game widens the divide between Sunnyvale Acre’s pampered teens and their clueless parents and blurs everyone’s perception of reality.

That includes those of us in the audience. Are we watching game action? Or is that a real trash can the lad and a bewildered mom duck behind, to avoid detection by marauding zombies?

A whiff of a cautionary tale rises from the tension between parents and children, but Neighborhood 3 is mostly fun, in the way of an especially good Twilight Zone episode. Like the best of Rod Serling’s excursions into the bizarre, Haley’s play is at once scarey, disorienting, amusing and ingenious.

We never see a zombie; it’s enough to see the actors react to these creatures, be they real or imaginary. A voice-over, in the way of an in-game electronic adviser, cuts in now and then with instructions for players (“pick up the cell phone and add it to your inventory…  pick up the hammer, you’ll need it later…”). Those instructions comes eerily into play in the “real-life” action, as in “Oh my god he picked up a hammer — IT HAS BLOOD ON IT!” I saw the play Saturday, and part of the fun lay in hearing the audience react and become more vocal as it went on.

Haley arranged for just four actors to populate Sunnyvale Acres, the upscale suburb of both the “real” and the “game” action. (Through GPS and satellite imaging, game algorithms put players in facsimiles of their RL neighborhoods. Which would be awesome.)  Scott Allen (Father Type), Mary Kababik (Mother Type), Megan Kaminsky (Daughter Type) and Evan Koepnick (Son Type) change names, costumes and personalities often, to give us glimpses into several families. Under Benjamin James Wilson’s direction, they excel at this formidable acting task and inhabit their many characters fully, instantly and without resorting to caricature.

Part of the fun of the play is putting two and two together, as we figure out the relationships of on- and off-stage characters. I especially loved the bit in which Kaminsky is desperate to save the girl she played in the previous scene. Clever theater, that.

Youngblood Theatre, a shoestring operation, staged the play in the basement of the Miller and Campbell costume company, at First and Walker Streets. Sometimes, Youngblood’s found spaces add to the atmosphere, but this play succeeds despite the shabby surroundings. Scenic designer Koren Nowak did what she could with a tiny budget and a constrained space. Her concept was good, but the PVC-and-plastic sheeting contraption that serves as a set was awkward and shaky as the actors moved it about, and the sheeting made for some unpleasant reflections. The drawings they on occasion slapped into the frames — minimal houses, interiors and street scenes and such — were cool. I would love to see Youngblood revive this piece in a more proper space with higher production values.

Twilight Zone came to mind first when I reflected on Neighborhood 3, but a second reference has occurred to me: Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, a Theater of the Absurd play that had great currency in the 1960s. In that play, half the population inexplicably turns from perfectly responsibly citizens into charging, one-horned beasts. The survivors are aghast as civilization falls apart around them. In Neighborhood 3, perfectly nice children inexplicably turn into grumbling, sullen beasts. You know — teenagers.

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.

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