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The On-and-Off Sparks of The Keep Going Songs
Abigail and Shaun Bengson’s music-theater piece soars when it’s not trapped in twee.
Alejandro Fajardo’s lights glisten and eddy in oceanic hues; the Bengsons’ playing becomes more and more abstract and ambient, and in what is unquestionably the most breathtaking moment in director Caitlin Sullivan’s production, Abigail takes sips from a bottle of water and, holding a microphone to her throat, blows triumphant sprays of mist into the air. The Keep Going Songs is, as Abigail describes it early on, “a concert / That’s also a wake,” and its mourning is at once expansive and specific: Her older brother Peter died in August, and the show — via a wide, spiraling path that travels through the evolution of trees and jellyfish, whales and crabs — circles around him. We get to learn about a jellyfish that grows into its mature state, then, instead of dying, devolves back into an egg, is reborn, and can repeat this aging and unaging cycle endlessly “until it’s eaten by something.” We get whale song, crazy facts about queen bees, and about how lignin — “the protein that makes wood woody” in trees — evolved before anything came into being that was able to break it down.
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