The shift in focus from outside to inside clarifies and intensifies what was already an affecting piece. “Hundred Days” now takes place entirely in New York City (mostly in Astoria, Queens), with lots of internal detours into the twisty corridors of each partner’s mind. The subsequent revisions suggest that autobiography is a highly mutable art form.Ī cross-country road trip that occupied the show’s center 11 months ago has been jettisoned.
“Hundred Days” (the title refers to packing a whole life’s experience into that period of time) was performed in an earlier version in January at the Under the Radar Festival of experimental theater. Gancher, spends most of its time in the light-devouring shadows of doubt. But their self-portrait of a show, which was written in collaboration with Ms. Bengson, in particular, finds herself opening baggage from her past that would seem to make happiness with someone else impossible.Īs you may gather from the fact that they are now married and performing together, the Bengsons got over their crisis of faith long enough to commit to a relationship that, life being what it is, will never be a sure thing. But three weeks is a long time in the newly discovered country of young love. They were so sure that each was “the one” for the other that they married three weeks after they met, having summarily displaced a pre-existing boyfriend (in her case) and roommate (in his). Staged with resonant economy by the talented Anne Kauffman, with sharp and subtle movement direction by Sonya Tayeh, “Hundred Days” is cabaret as cri de coeur, and it is advisable to watch it with a handkerchief at the ready. Such music is a natural vehicle for the torturous ambivalence of falling in love as young, brooding artists steeped in mortal thoughts. The form in which the husband-and-wife team of Shaun and Abigail Bengson couch their response is a sort of luxuriant, sentimental-cool folk rock, in which fatalistic and angry drumming figures prominently, along with sweet, swirling chords.
To wit: Whether by choice, chance or - ultimately and unavoidably - death, you will be separated from the person you love most.Īrriving at this realization has been the seed for all sorts of lyric reflections, be it from ancient Greek odists, Renaissance sonneteers or pop balladeers.
This poignant 90-minute show, which opened on Monday night at the New York Theater Workshop, is a response to one ineradicable and devastating fact of life. “Hundred Days,” the luminous musical memoir by the Bengsons and Sarah Gancher, is an everyday horror story with a very provisional happy ending - like so many chapters of human existence.
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