Hundred Days NYC Reviews and Tickets

"The inherent sadness of the situation is an essential part of an eclectic score that is anything but sad in its execution. It's hard to put a label on this very listenable and exciting score...Perhaps a decision was made early on to keep 'Days' contained in an uncluttered musical framework that is uncompromisingly direct in its presentation. Without gilding the lyrics (I wish I could have heard them more distinctly) a little more imagination in the staging wouldn't have hurt."
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“Despite its emotionalism and theme of death's imminence, the show barely touches one's heart…Wonderful as they are on a stand-alone basis, the songs too often seem more about themselves or their emotional workings than the drama they're supposed to illuminate. Too often, the lyrics get lost during the musical pyrotechnics…It's hard to become involved in their characters, about whom we learn only the barest minimum. They come off more as abstractions than people about whom we care very much.”
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"It’s glorious and spellbinding...This band, with soaring vocals, a foot stomping and hand clapping beat, entwined with brilliant songwriting will pull you in to their mythology as if in a dream. Not just with their musical excellence, but with their dedication to vulnerability, truth, and passion...Insanely theatrical while being simple and direct, they tell their story without much of anything else beyond their powerful drumming of the beat...Every moment feels authentic and spontaneous.”
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"Without elaborate sets, costumes, large ensembles of singers and dancers, and multi-million-dollar budgets, The Bengsons have successfully mounted a stunning musical with a believable story and a brilliantly executed score...The creative team create a space where The Bengsons create magic and transcend all expectations set by traditional musical theatre. Sonya Tayeh’s movement direction creates exquisite images throughout the performance."
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"To accept it as a musical, or judge it as a work of theater – I must then acknowledge the frustration of trying to follow a story that is often vague in its details and mumbly in its presentation. Shaun and Abigail are personable singer-songwriters and sometimes droll storytellers, but they are clearly not trained actors nor experienced dramatists…Passed more quickly for me once I treated the spoken words as patter between the songs."
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"It’s a rock cycle for which much has been done to make it theater-stage-worthy by director Anne Kauffman. Much has been done, but to little avail...The music is blandly insistent, the lyrics aren’t consistently intelligible and Abigail Bengson’s pipes reside somewhere between belt and strident...The musicians-back-up singers, are first-rate."
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"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."
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"In one scene, we watch the couple foresee growing older, decade by decade: both a witty meditation on maturity and a sober meditation on mortality. Under Anne Kaufmann’s subtle and clever direction, Abigail and Shaun and the band do not stay still...Every musician plays powerfully, but it is Abigail’s wail of sadness and pain in her key song that stays with you, piercing the night."
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