To use the internet today is to know instantly that it’s not good for you. Each far-reaching tentacle of its badness is already intimately understood: its mob rule, its brain-rotting games, its seductive and time-sucking refresh button; the way it builds walls even in the sacred closeness of the marriage bed, the way it impoverishes and poisons debating and dating alike.

Yet as Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s “Octet” delves into these ills, the effect is very different from that of, say, scrolling past yet another tweet complaining about Twitter. Dave Malloy’s chamber musical, whose West Coast premiere opened Wednesday, April 27, follows an internet support group that’s also an eight-person a cappella group, which proves to be about as close to the opposite of the internet as you can get. Not only must the singers share physical space and lock in eye contact and forge exquisite, gossamer harmonies from disparate voices; they must also breathe together as a human thermodynamic engine.

您坐在观众中也是该引擎的一部分，并以某种方式通过亲自剧院的神秘炼金术，互联网对我们的内在和外在生活沉没的恐怖。

确实，当亨利（Alex Gibson）唱歌时，对“ Candy Crush Saga”的成瘾可能意味着：“有时候我只是不洗澡。我几乎没有离开床，我不刷牙，只吃薯条和弹出整整三天。”或者，社交媒体用户不仅受到攻击；正如杰西卡（Margo Seibert）Bemoans一样，他们积极而强迫地寻找更多的证据，表明自己受到攻击，“在病态的鞭毛中阅读有关我的一切，多任务处理我屈辱的所有标签。”

如果支持小组结构，每个参与者都会转弯分享一个令人尴尬的真理，迅速厌倦，导演安妮·蒂佩（Annie Tippe）找到了巧妙的方法来使团队遇到的混乱，发霉的教堂地下室（艾米·鲁宾（Amy Rubin）和布列塔尼·瓦斯塔（Amy Rubin）和布列塔尼·瓦斯塔（Britta Vasta设计）变形。在她的演出中，该小组可以让人联想到洗礼池或药房结帐行，网络空间的黑暗和孤独感或上帝参观科学实验室的上帝。

“Octet” either keeps its characters everyman enough that they don’t stick with you or, after introducing them piquantly and economically, promptly moves on to the next humiliating confession before we’re ready to say goodbye to the last.

然而，即使受到严格的约束，蒂佩的演员仍然飙升。在音乐指导或马蒂亚斯的音乐指导下，伊莎贝尔·圣地亚哥（Isabel Santiago）不仅使她的声音变成匕首。刺后，她在里面扭动它。

The wide-eyed Kuhoo Verma, with equal acumen in moments of comedy and pathos, has the show’s only entirely solo number, just her voice in the quiet and darkness, no backup, and she seems to enlist the entire venue, air particles and all, into her world-building effort.

Malloy, who is best known for the cult favorite “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” (which Shotgun Players is producing later this year), makes the internet take musical form. The song “Refresh” seems to cascade, even inundate, the way a newsfeed overwhelms. In “Solo,” incel trolls grumble and growl from the stage’s dark corners, as might trolls under a bridge.

With its church setting, its references to tarot cards and hymns, its visitations by gods and monsters, its throwaway mentions of someone called Saul who magically organized the group, “Octet” keeps trying to reach winkingly for some vague higher ground that it never quite attains. Still, even nicks and ricochets off the spirit world serve as welcome reminders that some arenas of life will never be contained by desktop windows.

M“八位”：Written by Dave Malloy. Directed by Annie Tippe. Through May 29. One hour, 45 minutes. $29-$159, subject to change. Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. 510-647-2949.www.berkeleyrep.org