My Joy is Heavy Off-Broadway Reviews

It can feel heartless to accept the offer of this kind of confessional art-making with anything less than reverential sympathy. But that’s the issue right there: For all the Bengsons’ outward focus on freedom (“Every performance of My Joy Is He...

It can feel heartless to accept the offer of this kind of confessional art-making with anything less than reverential sympathy. But that’s the issue right there: For all the Bengsons’ outward focus on freedom (“Every performance of My Joy Is Heavy has a relaxed house,” Abigail tells us before the show, “which means you can do whatever is good for your body and nervous system”), there is a role we’re expected to play here, a narrow — if supposedly transcendent — emotional exchange toward which we’re being steered. When the Bengsons tell us to open our metaphorical hymnbooks to whatever page, we’re meant to kneel or stand or bow our heads accordingly. There may be moments when the formula succeeds, just as there are moments during a church service where something true and bright can come of the prescribed practice. But what there isn’t is room for questions, and I left My Joy Is Heavy with plenty.

The earnestness could be hokey or cloying—Night Side Songs, also playing Off-Broadway, traverses similar territory and fails to rise above the construct. Abigail Bengson’s ritual with two simple houseplants, bestowed upon audience members for saf...

The earnestness could be hokey or cloying—Night Side Songs, also playing Off-Broadway, traverses similar territory and fails to rise above the construct. Abigail Bengson’s ritual with two simple houseplants, bestowed upon audience members for safekeeping, shouldn’t work, and yet somehow does. But the ritual magic the couple creates onstage transcends all the woo-woo to become one of my favorite evenings of theater this year.

Nick Kourtides’s sound is crisp and well-balanced, and Rachel Chavkin’s direction adds considerable visual dynamism to a story that is necessarily about confinement, with particular help from Alan Edwards’s lighting and David Bengali’s video ...

Nick Kourtides’s sound is crisp and well-balanced, and Rachel Chavkin’s direction adds considerable visual dynamism to a story that is necessarily about confinement, with particular help from Alan Edwards’s lighting and David Bengali’s video design. Aside from one droop at the two-thirds mark, the energy stays high, and episodes of goofy humor periodically cut the navel-gazing tension. But there’s no question that, as promised by the title, a lot of this show is pretty heavy going.

The audience can’t strap in for months of story, of course, but the fast pace of The Bengsons' tonal shift is a bit jarring in a show that otherwise holds the audience’s hands so gently. The realization that you cannot really protect yourself fro...

The audience can’t strap in for months of story, of course, but the fast pace of The Bengsons' tonal shift is a bit jarring in a show that otherwise holds the audience’s hands so gently. The realization that you cannot really protect yourself from grief by avoiding love or attachment is something that comes with months of therapy, not minutes of song.