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‘My Joy is Heavy’ the Bengsons Sing Their Joy Through Sorrow
Like “A Tear and a Smile,” Kahlil Gibran’s well-known poem, the Bengson’s musical memoir My Joy is Heavy displays the couple’s affirmation of life in contrasts. Great joy can arise while experiencing great loss.The Obie-winning husband and wife team responsible for notable offerings like NYTW’s Hundred Days, presents an intimate, visceral series of experiences expressed organically in hauntingly beautiful music. Grounded in the audience’s remembrance of COVID lock-down, its isolation and traumas, we learn of the fiery trials the Bengsons went through separately and together during that time.
This powerful, soulful, cycle of songs and narration superbly directed by Tony Award winner Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown), transports the audience every moment the couple takes the stage. Abigail and Shaun invite audience members into their world, a gritty chronicle of emotions, spooling out from an extraordinary mix of folk-rock, punk and gospel that rearranges one’s psyche from start to finish. Because of audience enthusiasm, My Joy is Heavy has been extended through April 12, 2026 at New York Theatre Workshop.
What makes this production intimate and heartfelt includes the couple’s attention to the audience. To make sure they hear and see every lyric, turns of phrase, imagery and poetry, the production employs closed captions that appear above the stage. I found these to be less distracting than captions in other productions that oftentimes appear stage left or stage right. Additionally, the musical duo cuts to the chase identifying their wish to share a compelling revelation at the center of their musical memoir. “We’re here to tell you about this one moment, this one moment that happened right there on that bed.”
When Abigail says this, she motions to the bed in Lee Jellinek’s set design of Abigail’s mom’s house in Vermont. The couple and their toddler son stayed there during the alienating months of COVID, the time period of the production. It was then they had an epiphany, like a shamanic vision, which drives them artistically. Hoping that the expressiveness and power of their story helps restore harmony and wholeness, they try to connect with the audience so they might experience a cathartic, emotional release.
When Abigail and Shaun begin to discuss their COVID isolation, they call upon the audience to remember with them and reflect upon those lost to the pandemic. Abigail memorializes these individuals with a symbolic gesture involving two audience members. Then the duo plunges into their musical narrative with choreography by Steph Paul and music supervision by Obie Award winner Or Matias (Grey House). Shaun’s great versatility playing piano, guitar, accordion, etc., and the expert six member band directed by Matt Deitchman, accompany Abigail and Shaun throughout.
With them the couple rides waves of humor, uplift and sadness as they course through songs, not slowing down until they sing the last refrain of “My Joy is Heavy” to the audience’s rhythmic hand clapping.
As a part of the narrative we see snippets of Gramma Kathy, Abigail’s mother, and their toddler Louie in home video footage taken with their phones. Chauvkin uses these and other videos projected on the back wall of the set to convey and enhance mood and tone, and transition to other scenes with different emotional content. Also, Chavkin integrates these projections into the narrative to relay quieter moments of homely family life in “the calm before the storm.”
As a complement to the home videos, David Bengali’s video design, which accompanies the metaphoric song “Underground,” and serves as background for other musical pieces, effectively captures the Bengson’s interior emotions. For “Underground” the wild and evocative projections aptly serve the lyrics. For example, to reflect how Abigail and Shaun went into feelings of isolation and fear they sing, “I’ve been underground in a deep, dark cave, doing my best to stay live.” Alan C. Edwards’ lighting makes the projections pop. For her part Abigail experiences excruciating headaches that she labels PTSD. Clearly, the pandemic causes intense stress when, despite everyone’s assumptions, it goes on for months because of skyrocketing numbers of the dead and dying as COVID spreads.
With the drama of the pandemic in the background, Abigail and Shaun try for another baby. However, the risk reward ratio of a prior miscarriage plummets them into cascading fear. They elicit help from doctors and when the medication and fertility testing don’t seem to help, they watch holistic programs and go through Zoom sessions. Many of the profound songs as well as the humor deal with the Bengsons struggle with their having another baby. Standouts include “River” and “Don’t Hope.”
The first song is a striking, poignant remembrance of their baby who never makes it into life, a song of love and mourning. This devastating experience five years prior informs their roller-coaster emotions in the present when Abigail discovers the blue line of her new pregnancy. Though “over the moon,” Shaun and Abigail can’t allow themselves the luxury of celebrating, because “what if?”
“Don’t Hope” hits home with its simple humanity and perfect melody aligning with the repeated refrain, “DON’T DO IT, DON’T
HOPE, DON’T DO IT, DON’T GET HAPPY. Who cannot empathize with the sentiment that feeling too exuberant will jinx what one wants desperately? After this amazing song Shaun describes his riotous experience with little Louie on the Santa Sleigh and the humor breaks through the fear and makes way for the song, “Veil.” Both agree, they’re doing everything they can do. And this leads to their understanding that they can’t live avoiding their natural feelings. Together they decide, in the next song, “I’d Like to be Happy.” They choose to let go of repression.
By degrees we follow their emotional journey from the cave and pain to an expiation of the sorrow of the miscarriage and recognition that happiness shouldn’t be suppressed. And in between a few other remembrances and songs, the couple arrives at the epiphany Abigail refers to at the top of the musical. Thus, engaged audience members travel with them through flashbacks to experience palpably how joy and sorrow can occupy the same place in one’s heart, at the same time. The Bengsons bring the audience to this breathtaking and ebullient conclusion in the rousing gospel “My Joy Is Heavy,” as all stand in appreciation.
My Joy Is Heavy runs 1 hour 10 minutes through April 12, 2026 at New York Theatre Workshop. https://www.nytw.org/show/my-joy-is-heavy/
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‘Octet,’ by Dave Malloy, Rehabbing With Vibrant Song Circles
The cast of ‘Octet,’ by Dave Malloy, directed by Annie Tippe, presented by the Signature Theatre (Joan Marcus)
Addicted to your phone, via Instagram? Text? Candy Crush? Reddit? 4Chan? World of Warcraft? In Octet by Dave Malloy, directed by Annie Tippe, eight individuals who drop in to no-show Saul’s rehab in a homely church basement, find another hosting the weekly session. Thankfully, group leader Paula (the singer, songwriter Starr Busby), is nurturing and responsive to their cavernous, disabling confessions. There, in a harmonious, ever fluid, richly sonorous, song circle, they discuss their digital urges and expurgate them via the occult, each governed by a Tarot card designed for them and them alone. And sometimes the chorus joins in inspired by a soul hymn, encouraging the beauty of sharing in a non-judgmental like-mindedness.
What are they sharing? That which is maligned, misunderstood and apotheosized, the intimate, digital, hand-held which opens up their personal world like a hallucinogen and entraps them with their own emotional frailties. By the end of their epiphany-yielding, tonal and atonal harmonies (sung a cappella and sometimes performed with pitch pipes, batons and other make-shift percussion items), they are lifted spiritually out of this world and “out of themselves.” They’ve achieved a healing peace in the community of others and the audience responds with a standing ovation for they, too, have been enlivened and awakened, having stayed off their phones for almost two hours.
(L to R): Kuchoo Verma, Starr Busby in ‘Octet,’ directed by Annie Tippe, by Dave Malloy (Joan Marcus)
Dave Malloy, the progenitor of this innovative, exceptional and robust musical has created a masterwork with little theatrical spectacle, certainly nowhere near the breadth of Natasha Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, his signature work. In Octet, for which Malloy has deftly created the music, lyrics, book and vocal arrangements, he takes a complex and intricate subject of great currency and couches it within a simplistic, minimalistic structure so that the powerful message of community and our need for live interaction resonates. With the seating in the “round,” and featuring a one-walled back set which reveals community bulletins, community ads, a coffee pot, announcements, etc., we get the sense we are in a basement which by the end, infuses the sanctity of each of us which must not be underestimated. Above all Octet is like a soul injection to promote our awareness of each other’s value and worth more than an $1000 phone.
Into the choir circle of healing comes various debilitated, physically whole, but spiritually wounded internet adherents. When all are gathered, they begin the refreshment and comfort of unity so that they eventually will be released to express their hearts in solo song. The “Hymn: The Forest” reflects The Moon Tarot card which represents “Intuition.” Indeed, each of the individuals are misaligned spiritually and need to be “made upright” especially with firing up and being guided by their own wisdom and not the addictive distractions of the world.
The cast of ‘Octet,’ by Dave Malloy, directed by Annie Tippe, presented by the Signature Theatre (Joan Marcus)
In the first solo, we learn that Jessica in “Refresh” has put herself out there on “YouTube” and has gotten a huge response for it by those who comment. Though controversy gets clicks and likes and dislikes, it is also obsessive and must be followed by more “rants,” which Margo Seibert’s Jessica is addicted to creating for the comments. Henry (Alex Gibson) sings about his addiction to video games, and Paula (Starr Busby) sings about her distraction from her marriage and her losing her interest or attentiveness to making it work.
Distraction, dislocation from the most important relationships in one’s life is one theme of this production. Of course, viewing a screen is easy. Relationships take time, effort, pain and suffering along with the joy and good times. To stay dynamically involved with friends and spouses, one often must work through the underlying reasons and foundations for why one chooses the particular individuals one does to populate one’s life. It’s much easier to click on one’s phone and be taken away from problems by video games and escape introspection with “rants” which Jessica, Henry and Paula seek to do.
In the representative songs of what being “plugged in” digitally means to these individuals, we understand that in the “Hymn: Monster” which everyone sings, they project their inner “devil” outward and ascribe that the internet is their addiction. “Being connected online” has become the monster that has destroyed and eaten up their lives. Of course the irony is that the monster was always there within, waiting to manifest. But the way to get rid of it which will have to be a continual process, first is the realization that they have a “devil” within, and second that it is a devourer.
The cast of ‘Octet,’ by Dave Malloy, directed by Annie Tippe, presented by the Signature Theatre (Joan Marcus)
Karly (Kim Blanck) and Ed (the deep-voiced Adam Bashian) sing “Solo” about love and hunger for love. Ed is an Incel, a nonconformist. He riffs about Stacys and Chads (which is funny/drop dead serious Incelspeak) and they both sing about internet porn and online sexual addiction and the narcissism of having a ton of males (Karly) on her apps. In “Actually,” sung by Toby (Justin Gregory Lopez) whose Tarot card is The Magician, we note how far one must go to achieve one’s destiny, arriving at their potential. Toby has been waylaid in any pursuit of fulfillment.
In Marvin’s “Little God,” there is an intersection of spirituality and science which I found engaging in the tensions posited. J.D. Mollison is humorous in his visualizing that God is an 11-year-old dressed or looking like a Mermaid. In this song Malloy throws in ideas from Alan Watts’ The Book, and moves with gyrations into Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and concepts from wherever. This he does throughout this intriguing, rich musical referencing games, podcasts, film, theater and books which he lists in the show’s Playbill insert.
Kuchoo Verma, ‘Octet,’ by Dave Malloy, directed by Annie Tippe, presented by the Signature Theatre (Joan Marcus)
However, as a cleanse from the confusion of the myriad voices that try to persuade, convince and entrap us online, Paula conducts a wonderful ceremonial tea (“Tower Tea Ceremony”). It is then all sit, savor, become present, become located within themselves and prosper in their souls with the help of a drug that takes them deep within, but only for a few minutes. The ceremony yields humorous and beautiful moments. As a justification that there is something good about the online delusion that has swept their souls from beyond their easy grasp of themselves, it takes a song circle and tea ceremony to bring them back to a healing.
It is after the tea ceremony that Velma (Kucho Verma) courageously sings of her angst. It is she who brings an interesting justification of the global reach of the internet. In all the world, online,she has found someone to love who loves her back and makes her feel accepted and not such an ugly freak. The song “Beautiful,” governed by the Tarot card of The Fool, magnetizes all the concepts that have gone before and represents “new beginnings” and faith. This, Velma encourages and with moderation, as with everything, we understand that the “monster” can be conquered.
The cast of ‘Octet,’ by Dave Malloy, directed by Annie Tippe, presented by the Signature Theatre (Joan Marcus)
The evening comes to a close with “Hymn: The Field,” which the ensemble sings. Aligned through restoration and staying off their phones for almost two hours, the “chamber choir” has melded into an illustrious community. They have displayed their sterling singing gifts with measured ease, enthusiasm and a lovely grace which the audience finds absolutely delicious.
Octet’s superb director is Annie Tippe. Or Matias brings the majesty of Dave Malloy’s music to life through his adroit music supervision and music direction. Octet has been extended a number of times and is scheduled to close on 30 June. However, it may extend again. It runs 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission at The Pershing Square Signature Center (42nd St. between 9th and 10th). For tickets and times go to their website by CLICKING HERE.
CAROLE DI TOSTI 