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Daily Planet Correspondent 

OAKLAND – Since 1993, Berkeley-based Emerald Rain Productions has produced 12 theatrical events, with an emphasis on original rock musicals that address the interests of audience members in their late teens and 20s. 

Friday at Open Arts Circle in Oakland, Emerald Rain premiered its latest show “Itgirl” – an ambitious, but only partially successful, right-of-passage story about a high school prom that turns into a science fiction adventure featuring holographic body transport, evil technology genius, corporate mind and body control, social apocalypse, and the uncertainty of human identity. 

Written and directed by Berkeleyan Dominic Mah, with music by Gaby Alter, Sam Dorman and Ian Jurcso, “Itgirl” is an ambitious show. A youth angst story, it asks the question, very relevant in the world of the play’s characters, “Do things get better after you leave high school?” 

In “Itgirl,” high school lesbian dates Veronica (Berkeley High School junior Meggy Hai) and Eileen (Rebecca Fureigh), and Veronica’s brother Paul (Ian Jurcso) are excited that pop singer Itgirl (Ilana Berman) will be singing at their prom. 

Celebrity television VJ Lucy (Tina Chilip) is there to cover the event with her odd full body secret cameras, which are designed by a corporation that employs mysterious computer guy Tap (Euclides Pereyra), who appears to be the benign boyfriend of teacher Lark (Berkeley High’s Ashley Kelly). 

When the punch at the prom is spiked, however, things turn weird. The play makes a sudden shift, and veers into the world of science fiction melodrama. 

There is much in this play that is very good. The ideas it covers about the uncertainty of human identity, or about how in the future there will be no future, are interesting themes to work with. 

But the script in the second half of “Itgirl” spends enormous amounts of time sorting out the twists and turns of the science fiction technology, and going through a lot of exposition to explain them to the audience. 

When this happens, the characters and their plight take a back seat to the technology, which is not as interesting as the dilemmas in the characters hearts. At times the play sounds like an operating manual. 

Less might have been more, preserving the basic technology story ideas, but not feeling obligated to nail down every detail. 

Featuring just six tunes, “Itgirl” feels more like a play that contains a few songs than a full-fledged musical. Highlights are the ensemble’s Act I closer “Afterworld,” a song about the realization that the world is a place of one’s own imagining; and the right of passage transformation song “Comedy is Tragedy + Time.” 

Emerald Rain won a 1999 Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Score for its earlier musical “Vapor Tales.” 

“Itgirl” runs Friday and Saturday, through April 15, at Open Arts Circle, 530 E. Eighth St. (at 6th Avenue, near Laney College), Oakland. It then plays Friday and Saturday, April 21 through May 6 at Renaissance Ballroom, 285 Ellis St., San Francisco. All shows are at 8 p.m. 

The tickets are affordable for youth audience members. Admission is $12 (general), $8 (students, seniors and Theater Bay Area members). For reservations or information, call 510-982-0433.