Four teenage girls in suburban Ohio gather for weekly sleepovers to gossip, play The Sims, and navigate the complexities of adolescence and formative friendships.

First preview too soon on this one; needs some more time to cook. A few open-ended non-binding observations:

1.) Recently graduated playwright Eliya Smith has a distinct voice that you can trace from this to her earlier Grief Camp: slow-building naturalism tending to impressionism. She would rather let you feel out the texture of her characters in prolonged, winding conversation than dump exposition on you. This will not be everyone’s cup of tea even on its best day.

2.) Grief Camp could feel aimless because it was painting a picture of a whole group of emotionally stuck teens trapped in a liminal space. Dad Don’t Read This is a more focused effort on similar ideas that consolidates the emotional stuckness in a central character, allowing her to play off other characters who aren’t struggling in the same way. The resulting friction is more compelling to watch while making it more apparent that the opaqueness is something that Eliya is deliberately cultivating. The other characters would also like to know what’s going on with their friend.

3.) This is very modern and a good bit of the humor is aimed at a younger audience with assumed awareness of video games. It’s not at all a bad thing to write a play for your contemporaries. However, if you’re not at least a little familiar with The Sims, fair warning that Eliya is not going to slow down for you.

4.) Thematically, the hinge is that the characters are low agency: stuck in Ohio, in high school, in their social circles, in their parents’ houses, in their heads and their bodies. The Sims, a life simulation game, is vicarious escapism. The girls model characters after themselves and build homes and careers and relationships, but also sometimes act in not-so-benevolent ways to the avatars either out of boredom or as proxy for real-life frustrations. We consider, as things happen to the girls, who might be clicking the buttons—their parents, the playwright, God—and why?

5.) There is something high concept going on in the parallel between girls and Sims, but it was tough for me to get a handle on it. Are they literally Sims? Sim stand-ins for real people, part or all of the time? Imaginary Sims created by one lonely girl? Or perhaps it’s just a metaphor. If this was my play in previews I would consider trying to clarify this, but Eliya has a predilection for ambiguity, so maybe this is working as intended.

6.) Amalia Yoo is a highlight. Nice to see her back in action after John Proctor.

7.) It’s an intriguing sophomore effort from a promising playwright, and I would especially be interested in seeing her take on other subject matter in her next work. Although Eliya downplayed this in the Grief Camp press tour, both plays have characters in distress that read like her stand-ins, and it comes off a little myopic (in an endearingly human way). It’s easy to assume that the deep contours of our emotional experiences are rich with literary value—I do that, too!—but more specificity risks alienating a greater share of the audience.