DURHAM -- The effects of playing video games have been a concern since home computers first appeared. And with the more recent advent of online gaming, the subject has been well explored. Still, Jennifer Haley offers a chilling example of a worst-case scenario in her "Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom," now at Manbites Dog Theater Company.
The setting is upscale suburbia where kids get everything they want from their self-absorbed parents. Teenagers on one block are involved in a virtual-reality game that gives the play its title. The game maps the physical neighborhood, making all the inhabitants part of it, morphing the parents into video zombies that players must hunt down and kill.
Things get out of hand as the teenagers' addiction blurs the line between game and reality, prompting them to commit ever-escalating acts of violence in the neighborhood. When the parents finally become aware of the problem, their inept interventions only exacerbate the situation.
Haley creates a fine sense of foreboding over the play's tight 80 minutes. She skillfully conveys the merger of real and imagined, making the audience itself unsure where the line is. She also raises legitimate questions about conditions that foster such teenage addictions.
But the script has a problem of tone. Haley wants it to be coolly ironic, shaping many scenes satirically, but also wants her climax to be affecting in a way that requires investing in the characters.
Jeff Storer directs his cast to emphasize the robotic, disconnected nature of video games, great for atmosphere but ultimately too one-noted. Lucius Robinson and Mary Michelle Guthrie each play a quartet of teenagers, making good distinctions among them, although the actors can't quite shake off their adult personas.
Michael O'Foghludha and Lenore Field inhabit multiple parents with less variety, the former best as the odd, weed-whacking neighbor; the latter least effective as a stridently nagging mother. Byron Jennings II is the sinister voice of the video game, but having him onstage instead of using a disembodied vocal presence deflates some of the intended power.
Technically, the production is at the company's usual high standard. Mary Wayne-Thomas supplies an aseptic, spare set, the outlines of houses splayed over the black floor and walls punctuated with white furnishings. A range of tools and household items hangs ominously over the set. Chuck Catotti's spooky lighting and Marc Maximov's unnerving sound design envelop the audience in an otherworldly atmosphere.
"Neighborhood" has an intriguing surface but doesn't offer much to chew on, better at creating mood than substance.
