Ain't That Good News
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 Ain't That Good News |
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Running Time: 55 Minutes Venue: Coffee Emporium Sun, 06/06/2010 - 08:30 Mon, 06/07/2010 - 08:45 Wed, 06/09/2010 - 09:30 Thu, 06/10/2010 - 08:45 Sat, 06/12/2010 - 09:00 |
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A butt-kicking, heart-breaking, raucous Vaudevillian Cabaret!
From the Bengsons
Show Description: Abigail Nessen Bengson & Shaun McClain Bengson's Ain’t That Good News is a raucous vaudevillian cabaret, full of roaring music and impassioned characters. The Bengson duo evoke the quintessentially American stories of the immigrant and the outcast and play at the heart of the political struggles of our age through a melding of the musical forms of Tin Pan Alley, the Old South, German Weimar and rock and roll. The show is constantly evolving. As the Bengsons travel, they trade songs and drinks for new stories from the personal to the divine, and shift the work to reflect where they've been, and each new community they're in. Directed by David Eppel.
Most Fringy Thing: This funny, sexy, and moving musical adventure follows a young couple as they travel around the world, with stories of the folks they've met from the townships of South Africa to the dumps of Tijuana.
Artist/Company Bio: The Bengsons are the best in vaudevillian indie folk and rising stars in the NYC experimental music and theater community. They have performed their original shows, performances pieces and original musicals, Ain't That Good News and The Magic Show: The Story of the Barefoot Angels, across the country and around the world. They have appeared to acclaim at such venues as Culture Project’s Women Center Stage (NYC), MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA), terraNOVA Collective’s soloNOVA Arts Festival at The Daryl Roth Theater (NYC), La MaMa E.T.C. (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC), BRIClab (Brooklyn, NY), The Flynn (Burlington, VT), Town Hall Theater (Middlebury, VT), The Thacher School (Ojai, CA), the Tijuana Christian Orphanage (Tijuana, Mexico) and the Market Theater (Johannesburg, South Africa). The Bengsons are also activists and teachers, who have taught students in NYC's public schools and Cambodian immigrants in Massachusetts, as well as internationally, including at the Market Theater Lab of Johannesburg, ZA, the Tijuana Christian Orphanage of Tijuana, Mexico, and ASAPROSA, in Santa Ana, El Salvador.
Hails from: Middlebury, VT / Brooklyn, NY
60 Second Preview:
Praise for the Bengsons:
"Not only a tremendous musical talent, but also a raw honesty and sincere righteousness."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Inspired... worthy of Bob Fosse's Cabaret work, as funny as it is horrifying."
EDGE Entertainment
“Friendly, fresh-faced and downright enchanting... audiences are bound to sit up and take notice.” Addison Independent
“Beautiful and artful.”
NYTheater.com
“A rare and compelling talent.”
Rachel Chanoff, Artistic Director of Celebrate Brooklyn and MASS MoCA
“Tremendous vocals and a range of stunning and diverse musical stylings... Would bring tears to even Charles Manson's eyes.”
Brandon Lucy Campos, My Feet Only Walk Forward
Reviews
A Worth Final Show
rating systems:
1=Disappointed 2=Enjoyed 3=Recommend 4=Encore
( My friends have introduced the option of + or - )
Fringe rating
FRINGY=what you only expect to see at a Fringe festival
FRINGIER=even at a Fringe festival you think- wow, that
was different
FRINGIEST=pushes the boundaries of what you ever see anywhere
AIN'T THAT GOOD NEWS Randy 2.5 * Suzana 4 * Ross 2 * Tom 2- *
This was a high energy musical show with a female singer (whose voice
Suzana loved) and a male singer, guitarist, keyboardist, and banjoist. The
music was all original and varied in styles. The unifying theme was meant
to be the stories of the places and peoples that the musicians had met on
their travels and that had inspired the songs. I was happy to listen to the
music and the stories for 75 minutes (they ran long but it was the last show
of the Fringe and a standing room only house.) I would be glad to listen to
them perform if I happened to be where they were, but I don't believe I would
go out of my way to hear them again. It was a fine way to wrap up the
Fringe Festival.
DaytonMostMetro Review!
DaytonMostMetro - "Performers like no other. To be frank...you, yes YOU... have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to miss their performances whenever their nomadic path winds through Southwest Ohio."
Read the rest of the review here
CityBeat Review
by Rodger Pille
Critic's Pick
There is something supremely liberating about knowing that, of all the many people around the world, at the instant you’re attending Ain’t That Good News you most certainly are the only one having that exact experience. You must be, because there's no show quite like it. Not just in the Cincy Fringe or any Fringe, but on any stage anywhere.
Read the rest of the review here
CityBeat Preview
Full article here
by Rodger Pille
Ask Abigail Bengson how best to describe her Fringe show, and she doesn’t hesitate. “A rockin’, sockin’ husband/wife duo in their twenties traveling the world and singing about sex and soul,” she says. “Blam!”
Featuring a unique blend of vaudeville showmanship with Gospel, Folk and Rock music, Ain’t That Good News is essentially about the people she and husband Shaun have met in their travels around the world. “It’s a tribute to them,” Bengson explains. “This piece says we all have a story worth telling and even mythologizing. It’s a piece to unite us. Plus we sing about boobies and God. Fabulous combo.”