In MusicalFare's 'Hundred Days,' Love Lives Imitate Art for Real-life Acting Couple by Melinda Miller
(Buffalo News, 7/11/24)
The musical “Hundred Days,” making its Western New York premiere at MusicalFare Theatre, is the story of a pair of married musicians, named Abigail and Shaun. The music is a rich folk-rock Celtic-y mix, as though Simon & Garfunkel are playing with Mumford & Sons.
“Hundred Days” also is the creation of a pair of real-life married musicians named Abigail and Shaun, who performed in the original show, which became a bit of a hit a few years ago.
The question is, can “Hundred Days,” a partially fictionalized version of the love story of the real Abigail and Shaun Bengson, maintain its emotional spark without the Bengsons at its center? What could compare to the energy of a husband and wife, together on stage, singing their way through the highs and lows and secrets of a genuine relationship?
MusicalFare may have a solution with the performers playing its versions of Abigail and Shaun – Samantha Sugarman and Nick Stevens.
Sugarman and Stevens are not married in real life, but we are calling it “close enough”: Their wedding will be exactly three weeks after the show ends its run on Aug. 4.
MusicalFare Executive Director Randy Kramer said that Susan Drozd, who directs “Hundred Days,” called the unplanned casting coup “kismet.” Kismet: Fate, or destiny; a power that determines future events.
Producers weren’t expecting to find a local theater couple to play the show’s fictional couple; in fact, they weren’t even trying. So, how did the soon-to-be newlyweds wind up here?
“Randy reached out to me first about the show,” said Stevens, a known quantity for having performed with MusicalFare before, most recently in “Once.” Even so, it didn’t work. “I thanked him, but I thought I was just too busy.”
However, Drozd later encouraged Stevens to reconsider. “That’s when I started listening to (the soundtrack) at home,” he said. “I was playing it around the house, and that’s how Sam kind of got into it. She liked it.”
The third time MusicalFare called, Stevens said “Yes!” He also suggested they consider his fiancée, Samantha, for Abigail. A singer-songwriter-musician herself, he said, “Sam had a feel for the role already.”
They auditioned together with scenes from the show, and in a key scene the chemistry was obvious. As Stevens observed, “It went well.”
“Stories don’t often come around again in life, especially multiple times,” Stevens said, and Sugarman continues “so when it does, it’s usually a sign!”
Life is not totally imitating art here. The characters in the show, like the real-life Bengsons, meet, fall in love and marry within three weeks. Stevens and Sugarman said they have been together more than seven years, and engaged for more than a year. (Wedding prep is part of the “busy” that initially led Stevens to turn down the show at first.)
However, both couples did meet sort of artistically. According to their press, the Bengsons met during a band get-together, hit it off and immediately started seeing each other.
Stevens and Sugarman met at Jewish Repertory Theatre, where Stevens was performing with Saul Elkin in “Visiting Mr. Green,” a two-hander about a young man court-assigned to assist an older fellow. “It was the night I had all my friends come (to the show), because that way I got a group rate on the tickets,” Stevens recalled, “and Sam was sitting right behind them. Every time I looked over at them, I couldn’t help noticing her.”
Elkin also noticed something was up. “He was the best wingman,” Stevens said, laughing. “My character in the show was gay, but in the talk-back after the show Saul let everyone (e.g. Sam) know that I am not.”
“I thought he was great,” Sugarman said. “I thought ‘He’s soo cute!’ ” It turned out she knew one of Sam’s friends from high school, who briefly introduced the two after the show. Stevens later asked his friend for Sugarman’s number and took it from there.
Stevens has been acting for years, but this is Sugarman’s first time onstage as anyone other than herself. Still, she’s a natural for the part. The show centers around a band in rehearsal and plays right to her musical strengths.
The hard part, they agreed, is the stamina required to drive the emotional narrative of the story arc, a narrative that resonates with them and that they think will resonate with the audience.
The premise is, after a medical emergency, the possibility comes up that Abigail and Shaun have only a hundred days left together.
“This was totally in her (Abigail’s) head,” Sugarman explains. “All about her dreams, her fears … The theme is the feel of time, the meaning of time … of noticing life’s details.
“The string of life is made of those moments, no matter how long it is. You need to hold onto them,” she said.
“There’s that Tim McGraw song ‘Live Like You Were Dying,’ except you realize it takes a lot to come to terms with the reality of a relationship, the ugliness, the baggage, the person’s history,” he said. “The message is that you can’t let fear control your life. If you’ve found someone to love, to spend your life with, live it to the hilt.”
Through Aug. 4 at MusicalFare Theater on the Daemen University Campus, 4380 Main St., Amherst. In addition to Nick Stevens and Samantha Sugarman, the show stars Anna Krempholtz, Theresa Quinn, Kevin Stevens and Jay Wollin. Running time is about 90 minutes; free parking is available onsite. Tickets, including fees, are $55; $20 for students with ID; $30 for those younger than 30.