"Hundred Days" at New York Theatre Workshop

I don't have a lot to say about the third and last show we saw on our NYC trip. Hundred Days is not a play, per se, but more of a musical performance piece. We saw it in part because it had originated from the Bay Area, commissioned at Z Space in San Francisco, and it features at least one former Bay Area artist.

The Show

This is not a play. It mostly takes the form of a musical performance, with a band on stage with their instruments. There is a kind of loose narrative as the lead singer leads the audience through a story that serves mostly to link the various songs together.

We begin with a vague description of something very traumatic that happened to the lead singer as a teenager. This event (which is never explicitly described) is followed by The Dream, which involves meeting the love of her life and then losing him after 100 days.

What happens eventually is that she does, indeed, meet the right guy, in much the way described in the dream (and he turns out to be the guitar player standing next to her on stage here). Together they face the uncertainty of dealing with the fear of the rest of the dream coming true, too.

In between we have a lot of reasonably related songs, though there are some fairly long bits of spoken words.

I guess the closest comparison I can come up with, stylistically, would be something like Stew's Passing Strange, where the artist tells a story about his own life, illustrated with songs. This show's narrative is not nearly as strong, however.

The book for this show is written by The Bengsons (Abigail and Shaun, who happen to be the lead singer and her husband, the guitar player) and Sarah Gancher. The Bengsons also wrote all the music and lyrics. The show seems to be based on real events that actually happened to the Bengsons. I'm told the original show at Z Space included more material that was a fictional story that takes off from the real background. So it's a bit unclear to be how much of Hundred Days is meant to be taken as real, and how much is made up.

The Performance

This is clearly a talented group of musicians. The Bengsons and their back-up band are terrific musicians. The music and the singing are quite good. I was particularly impressed with drummer Dani Markham (though as a former drummer, I may have a bias here). And the room in the theater was quite nice, though the building itself is unassuming. But the acoustics were very good, and the design with hanging lights was nice (though they moved in some odd and distracting ways during the show).

The show is fundamentally a love story between Abigail and Shaun, which is nice, and it seems to be quite genuine. I have to say that some of the talky material later in the show just seemed a bit self-indulgent, though. And there is a definite feeling of something missing. I'm not sure whether that reflects the changes made from the original version in San Francisco or whether the piece just doesn't quite end. But I distinctly felt unsatisfied at the end of the show. Not displeased, really, but I didn't feel like I'd gotten anything out of it beyond some entertainment and a sense that these folks felt the need to tell us all how much they loved each other.

Bottom Line

It was a pleasant evening, but not really what I go to New York to see on stage. I would have been happier had the show had a bit more to say to me about my world or my life, rather than just focusing on the one couple and their story.

But there is definite talent here, and good music. I'd just like to see a bit more or deeper story incorporated into the show.