Ohio
Rating: ★★★★
Venue: Young Vic, London
Cast: Abigail Bengson and Shaun Bengson

An intimate and rousing new musical experience by real-life couple Abigail and Shaun Bengson, known for their evocative Indie-folk music and deeply personal storytelling. 

When Shaun turned his back on the church, he found a new home in music. Confronted now with acute degenerative hearing loss, he’s making the choice to live joyfully in the face of life's many unanswerable questions. 

After making waves at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the folk-indie show has opened at the Young Vic. Abigail and Shaun Bengson start the show with a question posed to them by their child: what happens to us when we die? This is a show about death, but most importantly about living. 

For the next 75 minutes, this incredibly talented duo invites the audience to join them in a deeply personal and yet universal exploration of faith and mortality through songs that fall in the space between oneiric and organic, inspired by nature and by their own lived experiences of hardship and, in Shaun’s case, grappling with progressive hearing loss. 

Abigail Bengson’s vocal dexterity was hypnotic, and just the pure joy she transmitted while performing made her a delight to see. Her effervescence was complemented by Shaun’s earnestness, and the two together made for a wonderfully balanced act that moved me to tears on more than one occasion, particularly when discussing a beloved teacher from Shaun’s past and the circumstances surrounding the birth of their son. There are moments of audience interaction which are very wholesome and make it feel more intimate.  

The performance I attended was unfortunately disrupted first by technical difficulties and later by a medical emergency that meant the last 10 minutes could not be performed, but the production shared the script so we could read the material in its entirety. While I wish I had seen those last minutes performed, having missed them didn’t detract from the show as a whole. 

Something to be aware of is that this is a musical experience, not a musical, not a play, but storytelling underscored by a folk-indie soundtrack. Even with its relatively short run time, I found my attention drifting off at certain points where the focus got a bit lost. 

This contemplative, wholesome, and moving piece is perfect for the more daring theatregoers, as this is by no means a traditional show.