"Bada Swing!": Two Aging Lounge Lizards at the Stissing Center

July 11, 7:30pm | Pine Plains, NY

After hit runs at Joe's Pub and the New York Comedy Festival, "Bada Swing!" arrives at the Stissing Center on July 11. The show is a lounge-jazz musical comedy following Bobby Bingus and Tommy Linguini—two 1960s crooners whose careers, habits, and worldviews are all showing their age—as they attempt a reunion concert of greatest hits that steadily goes sideways.

Written and performed by Josh Nasser and Michelle Chan Bennett, with music by Andy Bell and direction by Emily Olcott, the premise is familiar enough: aging entertainers who can't quite let go. What makes it work, judging from its New York reception, is how precisely calibrated the discomfort is. What starts as a standard nostalgia act slowly surfaces long-buried tensions between the two, and their uneasy attempts to keep things on track—while dodging anything resembling actual emotional honesty—become the real show. The changing times keep creeping in whether they like it or not.

It's a two-hander that lives or dies by performance chemistry, and Nasser and Bennett have had plenty of time to sharpen it. Worth catching in the more intimate setting of Banning Hall before it lands somewhere larger.

The Stissing Center, 2950 Church St., Pine Plains, NY. Tickets at thestissingcenter.org.