According to the script for ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||, 12 audience volunteers are to pick notes from a G-F# scale, which will then be used throughout the play in various improvised sections. If this happened at the performance I attended, I missed it completely. But even if I had chosen one of those notes myself, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Eisa Davis’s play about “coming of age under pressure” may leave much up to chance, but it lacks the payoff of untethered musical expression.
Now playing Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre, GCM follows a group of gifted girls at a summer music intensive in Berkeley, California. Fax (Hillalry Fisher) arrives reluctant to explore aleatoric, or chance music, which forgoes traditional composition for a more spontaneous, instinctual approach. But how that translates onstage is another story.
Lost in translation
A co-production with American Conservatory Theater, GCM played earlier this spring on the West Coast. Its journey east hasn’t done it any favors. Under the direction of Pam MacKinnon, Davis’s play never finds its rhythm, even if it’s improvised.
As an unhoused percussionist estranged from her academic father, Margot (a grounded and musically gifted Naomi Latta) finds connection with Fax, but pianist Rile (Yeena Sung) drives a wedge between the pair’s budding friendship and Margot’s growing attraction. Meanwhile, multi-instrumentalist Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera) meanders throughout the scenes as an emotionally flat observer.
Director Pam MacKinnon, tasked with translating Davis’s ideas into a coherent, intermissionless hour and 45 minutes, fails to find the esoteric throughline, resulting in a frustrating and antsy theatrical experience.
Margot says it best when debating with Fax, who’s frustrated with a student who went unexpectedly “freestyle” during a performance: “If you can’t be good with whatever happens on stage you shouldn’t go up there.”
Fair enough. But asking an audience to sit through it is a different conversation. Chance music rewards surrender. This production makes it hard to come by.
It wants better content.
Is ‘||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||’ worth seeing?
Four gifted girls, one summer, and a play that has all the right instruments but can’t find the song.
- Vineyard Theatre, 108 East 15th Street, New York City
- Notable performers: Hillary Fisher, Naomi Latta, Gianna DiGregorio Rivera, Yeena Sung
- Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, no intermission
- Performances through June 21, 2026
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