click to enlarge - Courtesy Of Peter Lourie
- Stephen Shore and Grace Experience
Middlebury native Abigail Nessen Bengson and her husband, Shaun Bengson, typically play themselves in Hundred Days, a musical memoir that tells the true story of how the couple fell in love and embraced life as if they had only 100 days left to live. The Bengsons have toured the U.S. performing their concert-style show since its San Francisco premiere in 2014.
But for the musical's Vermont debut, a different real-life couple will play the Bengsons: Lincoln native Grace Experience — daughter of novelist Chris Bohjalian and photographer Victoria Blewer — and her boyfriend, Stephen Shore. Playing from Thursday, April 4, through Sunday, April 7, at Town Hall Theater in Middlebury, the 90-minute show explores themes of mortality and the painful inevitability of love ending in loss.
The Middlebury Acting Company production follows Abigail and Shaun's whirlwind romance, in which they marry just three weeks after meeting and confront Abigail's fear of losing Shaun to illness. The premise comes from a dream Abigail had that her future husband would be diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, leaving the two only 100 days together.
"Most people, we live for the weekend or retirement or looking forward to an event," Shore said. "If you live like you only have 100 days, how would that be different? It forces you to think, Am I loving enough? Am I feeling enough? Am I living enough?"
The cast conveys those themes through folk-rock songs such as "The Years Go By," a meditation on the passage of time. "We'll have Halloween in the morning / Christmas in the afternoon / birthdays at sundown," Experience sings, portraying Abigail as she scrambles to fit a lifetime of memories into just 100 days.
A New York Times critics' pick, the show has received national praise. Ben Brantley, the former chief theater critic at the Times, called the Bengsons' performance a "luminous musical memoir" and advised audiences to watch it "with a handkerchief at the ready."
The Bengsons, who split their time between Brandon and New York City, were not involved in the Middlebury production and probably won't attend the show, according to director Margo Whitcomb. The couple are busy premiering The Keep Going Songs at Lincoln Center Theater in New York City this spring. The show is inspired by their viral hit "The Keep Going Song," written in quarantine at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other works by the couple include The Lucky Ones, which explores the traumatic adolescence — marred by violence and her parents' divorce — that led Abigail to flee Vermont for New York.
Casting another real-life couple as the Bengsons in Hundred Days was perfect, Whitcomb said, since the cast didn't need to take time for the leads to form a relationship. Their emotional rawness is authentic.
Several aspects of the Bengsons' love story parallel that of Shore and Experience. Both women grew up in Vermont, and both couples met their partners while working on shows. Shore said he gets choked up whenever Experience sings lyrics about growing old together and what will happen when one of them passes away — no acting required.
click to enlarge - Hannah Feuer
- The band, from left: Madison Middleton, Chelsea Robinson, Kai Fukuda, Xander Bowles and Jon Jon March
A five-person band — accordionist, keyboardist, bassist, drummer and cellist — accompanies the characters of Abigail and Shaun onstage and occasionally chimes in with commentary.
In a typical musical, "the musicians are hidden in the pit, so to have them totally integrated into the storytelling is just exhilarating," Whitcomb said. "You get that kind of rock-concert feel."
The musicians essentially double as actors, said 23-year-old Kai Fukuda, a Middlebury College graduate who sings and plays keyboard in the band. In other shows, he can take a break between songs, but not in this one.
"You're thinking about your delivery — not just musically and technically," he said, "but also emotionally a lot more."
Whitcomb said the Middlebury production will incorporate more theatrical elements than did the Bengsons' original performance, in which the actors stood statically in front of microphones. The cast of the Middlebury show will wear body mics, allowing them to move around the stage. For example, Experience and Shore act out the Bengsons' dates, which involve eating pizza, drinking beer and riding the subway to Coney Island, Whitcomb said.
Part of what drew Shore to the script, he said, is the Bengsons' openness about their sometimes-tangled love story. Shortly after they meet, Abigail leaves her fiancé, and Shaun kicks out his roommate so Abigail can live with him.
"They're not afraid to show all the messy stuff," he said. "I don't think I've ever looked at a script where two characters were more honest and self-aware."
Experience hopes audiences will leave feeling that they should "keep trying and loving in the face of fear," she said. "Make that choice to love, even though it's scary."