Responses to 2019 US Tour of Anything That Gives Off Light
Strong and thoughtful… (ensemble and music) combine to create an ambiance, a taste of and for Scotland and Scottishness that likely to be matched only by Forfar bridies, meat pies and very buttery shortbread.
Newsweek
Anything That Gives Off Light is both an entertainment and a thought piece that focuses on whether we are stuck in our histories, or whether we can cast off the constrictive ties and reinvent new and better histories for ourselves in the modern world.
Front Row Center
[A] pugnacious, liquor-soaked musical… The songwriting duo the Bengsons composed the eclectic array of tunes—some poppy, some folksy, all good… A rich seam of aching observations about land and soil and property.
New Yorker
When I first saw it in 2016…I found the magical adventure form of the show where we zip between Scotland and Appalachia “a fitting way to explore [something] as complex a morass as identity. Nothing is fixed. Ideas morph with time and so too must our storytelling.” With songs by the Bengsons, it is a foot-stomping journey where the characters go beyond that surface layer of who they are and start peeling back their own sense of where they come from and what home is in a smart, probing, and unique way.
Recommended by Exeunt NYC
Interviews and First-person accounts
- Jess Almasy + Reuben Joseph talk devising, identity, and the humanity on the other side of the aisle. [READ]
- Jess Almasy writes about Sex, Politics, and Regional Control and the challenges of bringing Anything That Gives Off Light to the stage. [READ]
- Davey Anderson talks to Broadway World about the show [LISTEN]
- Diep Tran and Jose Solís talk about their impressions of Anything That Gives Off Light at Joe’s Pub on Token Theatre Friends. [WATCH]
- Also, our friend Josh Groban stopped by:
Read what press had to say about Anything That Gives Off Light‘s 2016 Premiere here.