Kristoffer Diaz's '#therevolution' at InterAct

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Diaz's 2009 hit with InterAct and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, featured similar dark humor and physical action, but also peopled its figurative scenario with genuine characters. #therevolution, despite capable performers, lacks characters who earn our attention and sympathy.

Drama squeezed through devices

The script is the 21st-century equivalent of a play with too many phone conversations: Characters talk to devices more than to each other. Brett Ashley Robinson, as "The Revolution," and Mary Tuomanen, playing "The Witness," address a presumably worldwide audience via YouTube videos, apologizing for "the new state of the world." The bizarreness of the idea that these hapless young women — who are sorry not only for many killings, but "for hurting people's feelings" — now rule the planet is exceeded only by the far-fetched way it happened, which the play finally explains.

"None of us ever thought about what we would do once we got those old assholes dead," they explain, but the complaint could come from the playwright. Diaz offers a grimly funny situation of two twentysomethings — insecure lovers with no vision other than killing "all the people who made the world not work," a belief in "awesome sex," and making Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars's "Uptown Funk" the new national anthem — but, like his characters, Diaz doesn't know what to do next.

The coleaders squabble, complaining about a lack of cooperation and patience from the unseen masses while they're "rebuilding the world from scratch," creating a planet without coffee or pie, but that still maintains the Internet and the power grid.

Shooting, shooting, and more shooting

Their split worsens when the Revolution enlists "The Muscle" (Anita Holland) to enforce compliance from the population, who are now openly referred to as "slaves." Before we really accept the rulers' relationship or idealism, the Revolution and the Witness separate, and the play meanders toward a depressing and obvious lesson — announced, like so much of the play ("it takes different muscles to build than to destroy"), and feebly echoing the perpetual revolt in many parts of the world without providing any insight.

"The explanation," one character says, "is never as exciting as the explosion." Again, Diaz seems to refer to his script. Director Seth Rozin's production often goes boom with video-game-looking promos for the revolution (featuring shooting, shooting, and more shooting), as well as some fun scenic surprises from designer Colin McIlvaine and lots of live video feeds (still more shooting).

Watching people talk to their iPhones — however earnestly — does not a play make, however.

Diaz imagines a popular uprising reminiscent of the 1976 film Network, with its cri de coeur, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore," but neglects to fuel the outrage convincingly. #therevolution actually seems to argue against caring; in Diaz's world, it just causes death, mess, and hurt feelings.

He certainly convinced me not to care.