The kids are definitely not all right. They are huddled together or locked in their rooms day and night, absorbed in an online game. Parents lead separate lives under the same roof and within a community of mirror-image suburban houses.
A son seems troubled? Buy him a Hummer. A daughter needs attention? Work longer hours.
Even these out-of-touch parents can't stay blind to what's happening forever. They begin to realize their kids are growing even more distant -- all in the same disturbing way.
The Bricolage production of "Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom," a riveting exercise in parent-child disconnection by Jennifer Haley, is haunting the Downtown storefront at 937 Liberty Ave. It's paranormal activity with an emphasis on the normal gone terribly wrong.
Four actors play multiple roles as "types" -- father, mother, son, daughter -- with each scene featuring two characters. Between scenes, the stage grows dark as speakers blast Arcade Fire and a sinister robotic voice gives game instructions. Tension builds through increasingly frantic exchanges of dialogue and the inhuman voice that reminds gamers to pick up weapons found in the neighborhood -- a barbecue fork, a claw hammer, a weed whacker -- and clues left on colorful Post-it notes.
Jacqui Farkas is particularly effective as the "Daughter Type" who flirts, who frets and who falls in with the other teens being sucked into the vortex of the game. Her counterpart, Bjorn Ahlstedt, begins in a nervous, staccato style, perhaps to represent the play's rhythmic language. He gains clarity and menace as his "Son" characters gain levels in the game.
The adults are revealed as cliched versions of suburban parents on the one hand and outright creepy on the other -- Tony Bingham transforms from a concerned dad to one who may have killed his infant triplets. Tami Dixon's moms are the most firmly rooted in reality, and they suffer the most as the teens' transformations unfold.
The adults evolve from concern to fear as they discover their kids are in the thrall of a game set in a neighborhood exactly like their own. The aim is to get to "the final house," where it's kill zombies or be killed. Players there can "kill without remorse," we're told, even though the zombies are familiar to all.
Director Matt M. Morrow puts the cast through its paces. When actors speak to each other, they rarely face each other, the better to drive home their inability to engage.
The production gets a huge boost from Stephanie Mayer-Staley's ingenious, agile set. Cubes and facade cutouts are repositioned to serve in a number of capacities until the climactic scene blows away all that came before. Actors enter and exit through cutouts of people -- Wormholes from one house to another? Representations of their cookie-cutter existence? Every choice is a conversation starter.
Audience members can prep for the evening in a lobby with arcade games, while the cloth-and-chrome seating provided by The Andy Warhol Museum represents Bricolage's vision to "make artful use of what's at hand." The 1920s-era seats were purchased for the museum in Paris in 1996 but had been in storage for three years when Bricolage's need arose.
The seats are comfortable, but expect to spend most of the night on their edges as you're drawn into the "Neighborhood 3" experience.
Looking for more from the Post-Gazette? Join PG+, our members-only web site. You'll get exclusive sports content, opinion, financial information, discounts from retailers and restaurants, and more. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.