Indie-Folk Vaudevillians The Bengsons Perform in Residency at the Satori Loft

“The best in Vaudeville Indie Folk!”

This proclamation was the subject line to an email that landed in my inbox last week about music/theatre duo The Bengsons, who performed their traveling show Ain’t That Good News at The Satori Loft last Friday and Saturday.

Their week-long workshop and residency with The Satori Group culminates with an excerpt from their work-in-progress The Proof, to be performed as part of Satori’s “First Look” series alongside two others works-in-progress from Satori company members Anthony Darnell and Greta Wilson (last night and tonight, Feb. 7-8 at 8pm, $8 suggested donation; tickets).

If that whole “vaudeville indie folk” thing gives you pause, you wouldn’t be in bad company: it certainly raised a few eyebrows around my office. It shouldn’t.

The Bengsons exist on the edge of a wider push toward personal storytelling of the true and fantastical variety embodied elsewhere in the recent success and wild popularity of storytelling groups like The Moth and, locally, A Guide to Visitors. Wife and husband team Abigail Nessen Bengson and Shaun McClain Bengson have embarked on a global quest to meet people, hear their stories, and write quirky songs about them along the way.

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The caravan of stories in Ain’t That Good News ventures to places as far-flung as an El Salvadorian junkyard as well as nearer to home in New Orleans and Rutland, Vermont. The stories themselves range from the relatively commonplace, (a soccer game between rival gangs), to the more fantastical, (a reincarnationist recounting a string of gay love affairs with history’s greatest dictators). The songs are as varied as the stories but always catchy and engaging, presented minimally on a bare stage with simple projections to denote the current location. If the vaudevillian shtick sometimes borders on being a little too practiced and outsized it’s forgivable, because the honesty and the empathy for the subjects are undeniable.

Unlike Good News, The Proof will focus on one central story and be a fully realized stage production including video design by Satori’s Andrew Lazarow. The Bengsons radiate charm on stage, and if their cabaret show is any indication, their full production promises to be both eccentric and touching. I’m looking forward to it.