Four teen girls explore their lives through music in world premiere play by Eisa Davis (photo by Carol Rosegg)
||: GIRLS :||: CHANCE :||: MUSIC :||
Vineyard Theatre
Gertrude and Irving Dimson Theatre
108 East 15th St. between Union Square East & Irving Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 21, $37.80-$106.92
www.vineyardtheatre.org
Eisa Davis’s ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| unfolds like an improvisatory jazz theatrical piece, transforming the concept of the creation and playing of music into subtle and not-so-subtle metaphors about growing up and making choices. It explores chaos and empathy, education and impermanence, and building — or not building — family and community, with time jumps and forays into alternate realities.
If you’re one of the first twelve people entering the Vineyard Theatre, you’ll be offered the opportunity of selecting a note on a keyboard chart that will, when done, form a unique tone row for that night’s performance, serving as the underlying musical theme. The cast will develop it at the start of the play, asking the audience to participate, and the tune will make appearances later on as well.
The show follows four teenagers of color as they prepare for their final project at a girls summer music program in Berkeley. Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera) is a straightforward flutist who mostly stays in the background; Fax (Hillary Fisher) is a vocalist who always prefers to have a plan; Margot (Naomi Latta) is a wildly unpredictable drummer; and Rile (Yeena Sung) is a pianist who enjoys experimenting.
Early on, Rile is playing the end of “Una Voce Poco Fa” from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville when she makes a mistake and improvises around it, completely throwing Fax off. “I mean it’s about being intentional with your juxtaposition,” Fax says, clearly unhappy. Rile responds, “Putting things together that don’t seem like they’ll fit.” Soon after, Fax declares, “Don’t do random shit onstage that’s different from what we practiced.”
Over the course of 105 minutes, the four characters face such issues as race, class, gender, and sexuality as they try to find their place not only in music but in the world itself, one filled with trouble and danger. “I love getting up in the morning to come here — when the world feels like one disaster after another,” Fax says.
Margot later explains, “Quake wasn’t random and it wasn’t planned / just cause and effect from billions of years ago to now / we’re given an effect and we get to make a new cause with it / which makes a new effect and / it’s a chain / a network of exchange.”
Margot (Naomi Latta) and Fax (Hillary Fisher) form a unique bond in ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| (photo by Carol Rosegg)
Nina Ball’s set consists of four small platformed music sections, one for each character, surrounded by angled columns that harken back to Greek tragedy; it evokes how the girls are four distinct individuals who can benefit from working together as a kind of band instead of on their own, like in life. Loneliness is a leitmotif. When Margot and Fax art talking about being artists — and human beings — Margot advises, “We’re supposed to do things we’re not supposed to do . . . you have to go out on a limb to do anything crucial,” but Fax replies, “But then you’re like lonely.” Fax has a home to go back to, one that seems to be growing by the day, while Margot is much more on her own.
Mel Ng’s costumes change often, with cool little touches that at first define the characters by specific color schemes. Russell H. Champa’s lighting gives each of the girls their personal moment to take center stage. It’s a strong, talented ensemble, like a tight-knit jazz quartet, although the narrative does occasionally meander off track, becoming too abstract, but it always finds its way back to the melody. Fisher (The Notebook, Between the Lines) and Latta, in her impressive off-Broadway debut, play off each other with a gorgeous rhythm, with Sung (Mary V, Comfort Women: A New Musical) riling things up just enough as Rile, and Rivera, in her off-Broadway debut, providing the right elements as the ending approaches.
Produced by the Vineyard in conjunction with American Conservatory Theater, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is conducted — er, directed — with an understanding, guiding hand by Tony winner Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), who turns Davis’s (Bulrusher, The Essentialist) complex script into a mini-symphony.
It is both a perplexing and rewarding play, weaving in and out of time and reality, expectations and desires, as four teenagers contemplate — or don’t — what’s waiting for them around the corner, and what their role in taking those next steps might be.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]