There is a very long area in the remaining third of The Retain Heading Tracks that arrives alongside one another to feel truly transcendent. The demonstrate is by the Bengsons — the genuine-everyday living pair Abigail and Shaun Bengson, who perform together as a band and generate operates of tunes-pushed theater — and in this patiently ascending movement, a track in praise of the humble earthworm moves into an extended, lovely looping suite. Alejandro Fajardo’s lights glisten and eddy in oceanic hues the Bengsons’ taking part in results in being additional and additional abstract and ambient, and in what is unquestionably the most spectacular minute in director Caitlin Sullivan’s production, Abigail takes sips from a bottle of drinking water and, holding a microphone to her throat, blows triumphant sprays of mist into the air. The result — that of a whale surfacing, serene and significant — is, in the literal feeling, excellent.
If The Keep Likely Music held heading on this sort of a reliable high — or had maintained 1 all the way up to this stage — the final result would be a marvel. But even though the present obviously will come from a spot of deep earnestness, superior will and superior perform are two distinctive points, and the Bengsons aren’t generally capable to convert the just one into the other. It’s not about the songs: There, the duo are as reliable as they come. Abigail’s voice can roar and warble and whine with folksy grit or can climb into the rafters with songbird delicacy. Shaun is a fearsome finger-picker and, along with juggling a series of guitars, can more than maintain his possess on numerous keyboards, an accordion, and a trumpet. Then there is that mesmerizing looping. When the Bengsons embrace the primacy of seem, then items genuinely start off to sizzle: That they’ve last but not least let go of spoken textual content by the time the whale sequence rolls all-around is portion of what aids the second climb to its zenith. But for a great deal of the show, Abigail serves as the key narrator, and her shipping and delivery chafes.
Shaun speaks and sings, far too, though never as much. The Bengsons present variations of themselves that situation Abigail squarely in the emotional and theatrical foreground with Shaun a number of steps at the rear of — quieter, far more deadpan, keeping down the rhythm. 6 a long time back, their clearly show Hundred Days told the story of the couples’ meeting but mainly of Abigail’s existential stress in its wake. The Retain Likely Tunes is, as Abigail describes it early on, “a concert / That’s also a wake,” and its mourning is at as soon as expansive and precise: Her more mature brother Peter died in August, and the demonstrate — by using a extensive, spiraling route that travels by the evolution of trees and jellyfish, whales and crabs — circles all around him. I respect the intention: There is a great deal that’s gorgeous and generous about the way in which up to date theater has been opening up areas for shared grieving. Nevertheless I located myself regularly distanced by the Bengsons’ — perfectly, Abigail’s — tone. “It’s not about me …” she sings as The Retain Heading Songs starts, “And it’s not about you / It’s about all of us.” I want to feel her I do, partly. But …
Abigail Bengson winks and mugs. She commences guffawing halfway as a result of jokes in that particular way that both undermines and underlines — that way that signals that the joke-teller is eager to come down on the aspect of self-deprecation or smugness relying on which way the wind blows. She fills her sung supply with fervent, illustrative gestures, pointing to her head on the term “know” or upward on “God.” She’s bought enormous stores of electricity, and they frequently spill out in substantially the same way a precocious, theater-curious kid’s would — they say, Look at me. And there would be almost nothing incorrect with that — information flash, performers want, will need, and have to be seemed at! — if there weren’t a kind of bogus egolessness also currently being carried out. All this self-consciousness tends to make for an unpleasant patina over what is at its main, I’m particular, authentic sincerity. It makes cringy wrinkles in usually amusing or poignant sequences. In a track known as “Kick Ass, Kiddo” (Peter’s recurring encouragement to his sister), the Bengsons sing, “If we can not pay for to stay in New York any longer / What do I inform my little ones? / If I’m nervous they will be / The serfs of feudal robotic overlords / What do I explain to my youngsters?” It’s amusing it’s — oof — true. Then Abigail sings, “If I’m concerned that getting young children ruined our life and professions since all our childless artist mates seem to be to be better reviewed and have a great deal greater skin …” People chortle, but the giggle feels inexpensive — not strictly for the reason that of material but, again, because of a specific cloying hamminess of tone. And below I am fulfilling the prophecy, I suppose, but it’s not about youngsters. It’s about a dissonance in the perform, an aspiration to the epic and outward-experiencing, undercut by a stuckness in the self.
For the reason that, when the Bengsons are at their greatest, they are epic, and they do locate both question and joy in the world’s wild mysteries. In a attractive track referred to as “Awe,” they share “four great things” with us — because awe, “it turns out … neurologically talking,” is “the most effective antidote” to grief. We get to study about a jellyfish that grows into its mature state, then, instead of dying, devolves back again into an egg, is reborn, and can repeat this aging and unaging cycle endlessly “until it is eaten by something.” We get whale music, outrageous information about queen bees, and about how lignin — “the protein that tends to make wood woody” in trees — developed ahead of anything arrived into staying that was capable to crack it down. And so, billions of years back, since these earliest trees “could die, but they could not dissolve and redistribute,” a mass-extinction function transpired. “But nobody’s chatting about how trees were dicks as soon as as well,” sings Abigail, “So there’s hope for me and you.”
It is one particular of the show’s very best jokes, and in times like these I felt the attraction of The Continue to keep Going Tunes most fully — just as I felt its efficiency when the Bengsons’ songs, in its far more sonically daring sorts, came to the fore and swept us together. But the output lacks rigor, the two tonally and structurally. We do not need to be so ingratiatingly played to, and, at virtually two intermissionless several hours, the show demands a tighter initially half, alongside with at least a person much less climax. Musically, it loses oomph with every single a person, which is a disgrace, due to the fact when all the aural and emotional layers of The Retain Going Tracks slide into harmony, the Bengsons take care of to touch a thing soaring and resonant — something that really is not about them, and not about us, but about something vaster than us all.
The Hold Going Tunes is at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Middle Theater through May perhaps 26.
