Hundred Days

C

Even though it received favorable reviews when it was presented at the Under the Radar Festival last winter, I would not have seen this show if it had not turned up on my New York Theatre Workshop subscription. Taste in music is very personal and I thought it very unlikely that the folk-punk genre would strike a chord with me. Alas, I was right. Although The Bengsons (Iphigenia in Aulis), singer/songwriters Abigail and Shaun, who composed the music and perform it along with the other four musicians in their band — Colette Alexander, Jo Lampert, Dani Markham and Reggie D. White — are appealing and talented performers, the format of the work is unsatisfactory. The book they wrote with Sarah Gancher is basically a song cycle interrupted by dialog. At a crucial point in the evening there is a long stretch of dialog where I would have expected music to carry the emotional thrust, as if they mistrusted the expressive power of their music to get the job done. To my senior ears, the music was much too loud and percussive and the lyrics were occasionally hard to decipher. The somewhat confusing story involves Abigail’s recurring dream since adolescence that she will meet the man of her dreams, but he will soon die, leading to the idea that they must live as if they only have 100 days to share. The scenic design by Kris Stone and Andrew Hungersford involves about 100 old-fashioned twisted yellow incandescent bulbs that go up and down plus a few vertical fluorescent bulbs that do the same. The costumes by Sydney Gallas are appropriately punk. Anne Kauffmann (Mary Jane, Marvin’s Room) directed. The audience reaction was rather subdued. Running time: 80 minutes, no intermission.