'||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||' Off-Broadway review — coming of age is anything but harmonious

Read our review of ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| off Broadway, Eisa Davis's new play with music running at Vineyard Theatre through June 21.

Summary

• Eisa Davis’s ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is a play with music about the coming-of-age of four students at an all-girls music academy
• The show is at times overcrowded with conflict but hits musical highs when the girls perform numbers including a climactic trio and a warmup involving audience input
• The play is recommended for music students; fans of coming-of-age stories; and fans of Davis’s works

The notes of coming of age are complex for four students at an all-girls summer music academy in earthquake-prone Berkeley, California. Directed with no frills by Pam MacKinnon at Vineyard Theatre, Eisa Davis’s play ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is a stark, messy portrait of teen musicians figuring out their harmonies.

The students’ musical inclinations are attuned to their approaches to life. At the heart of the story is the soprano Fax (Hillary Fisher, with a satin, operatic voice) who likes her predetermined “roadmap” of musical structure and frets over college applications. She’ll eventually form a connection with the baggy-clothed drummer Margot (Naomi Latta, contemplative and enigmatic), who values going with her gut, and the chicly-dressed pianist Rile (Yeena Sung, volatile), outgoing but prone to fits. The fourth character, multi-instrumentalist Clementine (an upbeat Gianna DiGregorio Rivera), offers intermittent conversation and often hangs around as a background musical presence; she's content with practicing and doesn’t sweat theory like the others.

Through Fan Zhang’s sound design, which captures the aural atmosphere of rehearsal spaces and hallways, the first half’s music telegraphs the girls' developing relationships and anxieties. Their first vocal warm-ups (randomly determined by audience volunteers pre-show) descend into cacophony. Their sonic gifts are indisputable, but their hearts seem divested. By the second warm-up, Fax glances back awkwardly as her classmates let loose and freestyle but can’t join the revelry. These first 10 minutes tease the question: How will these girls synchronize?

Margot — who forms an early bond with Fax when the latter talks Margot down from a potentially fatal ledge — seems to have the match to light Fax’s fire. Banging improvised drum thrums on her seat, she later coaxes Fax into singing along and forging a sonic language between them.

This makes the climb to the show's climatic three-person concert piece, “Never Been,” all the more breathtaking. It wholeheartedly weaves seemingly arrhythmic chaos into artistry, charged with Margot’s thunderous drum solo, Rile’s jazzy piano riffs, and Fax’s apprehensive vocals gradually strengthening. The adrenaline-filled performance is capped off with an a cappella section as if the girls had been transported to a dimension where they could read each other’s minds.

As if reality has to pull the rug from underneath them, their 10-minute euphoria of musical liberation does not signify sustaining synchronization for their friendship. We feel, in Latta’s deflated expressions, that Margot feels disappointed she may have misread her bond with Fax as a courtship (it’s complicated for Fax), devolving into lash-outs and meltdowns. This is where the play’s second half stumbles amid a crowded landscape of crises both interpersonal (a sapphic love triangle, binge eating, a family twist of sorts) and external (earthquakes). The play’s grander swings land stuffy rather than smooth. While its ambition is commendable, the narrative of ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is a tricky composition to a fault.

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| summary

Young Fax has a chance to discover herself at an all-girl’s summer music academy vulnerable to the San Andreas Fault. When she meets fellow student Margot, a suicidal professor’s kid with a cryptic backstory, their burgeoning connection opens her up to the freedom of musical freestyling. While befriending their classmate Rile and experimenting with music, interpersonal discord begins to test their harmonious friendship.

The title references chance music, an experimental style that leaves parts “up to chance,” or improvisation, at the performer’s discretion.

Before its Off-Broadway premiere, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| debuted at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

What to expect at ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| earns high marks for its economical production design. With precision, Nina Ball’s sets turn Vineyard Theatre into wood-paneled rehearsal rooms and hallways, with instruments slotted into tight spaces and Russell H. Champa’s lighting signaling an earthquake alarm in the opening.

Mel Ng’s costumes are similarly rich in detail, like the Labubus attached to Rile’s backpack. The clothing and accessories reflect how each girl scrutinizes — or neglects, in the case of Margot’s baggy sweaters that suggest her limited resources — their wardrobe every morning, and Ng eventually tailors their style to each of their chosen adulthood paths.

Before the show starts, a whiteboard with sticker-marked piano keys is brought to the piano. Twelve audience volunteers are asked to place a sticker on notes of their choosing, creating a tone-row melody performed within the play. It’s vital to know of this participatory element to appreciate how the cast turns unwieldy "chance music" into sonic cohesion.

What audiences are saying about ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||

Users on online forums like the Mezzanine app and Reddit have shared mixed responses to the play, as did critics reviewing the San Francisco run.

• “[Hillary] Fisher is destined to go far in theatrical arts should she choose to do so. Her performance alone recommends this production, which at two hours would be more effective[ly] edited to ninety minutes or so.” - Barry Willis’ review on North Bay Stage and Screen
• “I was at the [play's] first preview and enjoyed it though it felt a bit long. It's a play with music. Recommended if you enjoy coming of age stories or stories about friendship. Has queer themes as well as alludes to some childhood trauma but it's subtle. Though it was well done, excellent acting and music skills from the performers.” - Reddit user u/latestnightowl
• “I thought the acting was superb on all counts. There are a couple threads in the book that I think would be worth revising, but it wasn’t so much of an issue that it affected my enjoyment. I definitely shed a couple tears, thinking about the moments in my life that were like this. There were a lot of young people on the night I went—well, young for theatre but I’m talking millennials/older Gen Z—and I could tell a lot of us walked out deep in our feels.” - Reddit user u/itriedtomelt
• “After a gripping opening, the play struggles to find its footing and pace much like the characters themselves. Ultimately, however, the show finds its rhythm” - My +1 at the show

Who should see ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||

• Fans of Eisa Davis’s work in Passing Strange, her Pulitzer Prize-finalist play Bulrusher, and the Warriors concept album she wrote with Lin-Manuel Miranda) will want to see Davis’s latest inquiry into music.
• Fans coming-of-age plays will appreciate that other shows in the genre, like The Wolves and Dance Nation influenced this work.
• Emerging and veteran musicians will appreciate young musicians determining their relationship to structure and improvisation. Vineyard Theatre is offering a limited amount of discounted tickets to New York City public high school students.
• If you're interested in learning more about improvised and chance music, this play can be a good introduction.

Learn more about ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| off Broadway

Eisa Davis’s play and its musician-actor cast explore the compelling variations in four frazzled teenagers’ relationships to music. Although the unwieldier second half deserves a finer tuning, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| composes a melody out of growing pains.

Learn more about ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| on New York Theatre Guide. ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| is at Vineyard Theatre through June 21.

Photo credit: ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| off Broadway. (Photos by Carol Rosegg)