In “The North Pool,” the white vice principal of a high school in Anytown, USA, asks a Syrian transfer student into his office for a little chat. The entire play consists of their conversation, in real time.
You expect some hot-off-the-presses content, right? All the more so since the writer is Rajiv Joseph, whose 2011 Broadway show “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” — starring Robin Williams as the title character — dealt with the Iraq War.
Instead, “The North Pool” turns out to be a bit of a whodunit. Which would be fine, if the show wasn’t so stupefyingly clunky.
Khadim (Babak Tafti) enters the office of Dr. Danielson (Stephen Barker Turner) unsure of why he’s been called in. The older man is casually friendly in that phony way people in a position of authority can be. “You certainly don’t need to call me ‘sir,’ ” he tells the student. “That’s my dad’s name, you know what I mean?”
The encounter turns into an interrogation as Danielson asks Khadim a series of questions to which he already knows the answer — prompting the audience to wonder why he doesn’t just move on to what he really wants to say.
But then nothing makes sense in this poorly plotted show. The urbane, well-traveled Khadim, who at one point corrects Danielson’s English, doesn’t know what a prom is. More likely he’s lying, but why would he lie about something so trivial? And why would the principal confess to so many incriminating details?
As the clock in Danielson’s office ticks by, very slowly, the characters bring up more and more shocking revelations, as if pulling them out of thin air: cold-war tunnels under the school! A gang rape! A sex tape!
Joseph clearly intended the show to play out like a game of cat and mouse, with the roles switching back and forth. But even Tom and Jerry cartoons make more sense — and they have more bite.