Review: “||: Girls :|| ||: Chance :|| ||: Music :||” Explores Girlhood, Ambition, & the Messy Harmony Between Them

Friendships forged during girlhood have a way of impacting our psyche like nothing else. These are often fleeting but instrumental in forming us into the people we will become. Connections often come as the result of forced proximity in schools and camps. Years later, we remember the essence of the experience and wonder what those people of the past are doing now and what they are like as an adult. Eisa Davis’ new play ||: Girls :|| ||: Chance :|| ||: Music :|| attempts to bottle the feeling of the ephemeral nature of these relationships.

The first thing that happens is that 12 volunteers line up on the side of the stage. They are given a sticker with a number. Each person is instructed to pick a note on a piano located on the stage. Afterward, the four main actors take to the stage and attempt to make a melody of the notes. It is Cageian in nature, yet clumsy in its execution, and is not really revisited again during the rest of the performance.

Perhaps it is an illustration of the four girls who find themselves in a Berkeley music program for low income teens with musical promise. Jangled together in a jumble of discordant personalities, we meet the over prepared and anxious vocalist Fax (Hillary Fisher), who is upset to be working with a very stoned and prone to improvising pianist, Riles (Yeena Sung). In contrast, Margot (Naomi Latta), an intense drummer, walks the line of caring too much and being so laid back that it seems she could fall off the edge of the earth with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulder. Shy and retiring, Clementine darts back and forth in the background, playing a large variety of instruments equally well. Of these four, only one will go on to be a musical prodigy.

The script and the direction by Pam MacKinnon do manage to capture the insecurities, jabs, egos masking anxiety, and the truest essence of what it felt like to be that age. The girls, on the cusp of so many unknowable possibilities, present as fountains of streaming consciousness. The conversations between characters often jumble together. As discordant as the notes that began the show, the first half proves to be a confusing mishmash of words that sometimes move the story forward. However, moments of emotional eloquence shine through as themes of poverty, self esteem, homelessness, and sexuality rush by us in a torrent of teenage girl words. “I don’t know this yet, but this person has begun to shape my life,” a fourth wall breaking Fax tells us as she finds a weeping Margot.

Like the practice rooms arranged across the stage in Nina Ball’s set design, each girl is aware of the experiences of the others but not understanding the scope of them outside of their individual struggles. Through this, the question of what it takes to be a truly extraordinary musician repeats like a drumbeat. The Van Gogh myth of an artist needing to suffer against all odds in order to shine makes a heavy handed appearance. While slow moving, most especially during the first half, ||: Girls :|| ||: Chance :|| ||: Music :|| does manage to distill the essence of the importance of those early connections and what they mean later in life.

The world premiere of ||: Girls :|| ||: Chance :|| ||: Music :|| will run through April 19, 2026, at A.C.T.’s Strand Theater. Single tickets, ranging from $25 to $130, are on sale now at the A.C.T. box office at 415 749 2228 or online at www.act-sf.org