||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| 

Review by Celia Ipiotis

Improvisation invites people to cooperate and that’s exactly what happens in ||:Girls:||: Chance :||: Music :|| at Vineyard Theater. A drum kit, piano, and mic stand by Nina Bell shape the intimate music practice rooms holding the four, talented women who speak as much through music as words.

Training to be an operatic singer, Fax (Hillary Fisher) sticks to the page. When her accompanist Rile (Yeena Sung) tosses in a few flourishes during a performance, Fax is totally rattled. Despite Fax’s fealty to the score, the troubled Margot (Naomi Latta) convinces her to read outside the musical score. And so a friendship evolves, with Margot releasing Fax from the bondage of the page leading to the two spending an unusual amount of time at Fax’s house. 

Less prominent in the group but just as gifted, Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera) proves she’s an amazing multi-instrumentalist trading a flute for a baritone sax and easily orbiting around the other three. Anxiety over studies, family and inflamed emotiotions flood the quartet of friends who bond and split like an accordian cranking out a rowdy polka.

Part of an all-female music conservatory, the dynamics center on the antics of young women absent the gaze of men. Loosely directed by Pam MacKinnon, relationships — sometimes  combative, sometimes sexual — shift into freely felt ways of being, when a sense of self still suggests a mystery.

After Fax and Margot establish their own “special” improvisatory language with Margot playing the drums (rather impressively) and Fax vocalizing over the beat, it becomes their personal form of communication–until, Fax shares her “special” language with Rile. 

Written by Eisa Davis, loyalties are tested, food fights get sloppy, and discussions about egg donor parents persist. This drama with music sharpens the struggles mounted by young people in pursuit of their identity. Indeed, the phrase repeated by Margot “Never been to this point in my life,”  sums it up. 

All strong musicians, convincing in their improvisatory noodlings, the cast is actually performing music composed by Davis.  ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| — a new play with music– was commissioned by Vineyard Theatre and American Conservatory Theater.

EYE ON THE ARTS/NY — Celia Ipiotis

Photos by Carol Rosegg