The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: NYTW’s intimate musical portrait of grief and connection
By Ross
A couple stands before us, shining from within while pointing to a futon couch that can, with a small shift, become their bed. This is our communal starting point, but also the place where life became smaller for them, where the weight of it all pressed inward in the hardest of ways, where the line between endurance and collapse felt dangerously close. It is where the finish line kept moving, to a place just out of reach, and where even the idea of something better felt uncertain at best, and terrifying at worst. My Joy Is Heavy lives inside that house with that kind of quiet permission and pain. Not to understand everything, not to fix anything, but simply to sit there with something difficult already growing.
It’s a profoundly uncomfortable situation, they tell us, like the feeling of entering a room where grief has settled in, and is learning how to breathe. That framing, difficult and dangerous, shapes the entire experience at the New York Theatre Workshop. Created and performed by Abigail Bengson and Shaun Bengson (The Lucky Ones), it invites us in wholeheartedly to an old familial home shaped by loss, chronic pain, and the quiet negotiations required to keep moving forward when forward no longer feels clear.
At the centre, though, there is music. Abigail Bengson majestically spins out vocals that are remarkable in their rawness and control, moving through grief, anger, and fragile hope with a clarity that feels open and unguarded. Each note carries the sense of something lived rather than performed. And Shaun Bengson’s presence alongside her creates a dynamic that is both collaborative and quietly strained, reflecting how shared trauma can both connect and isolate. Their music becomes their language, one that reaches toward what cannot easily be spoken and allows it to exist without resolution.
“There’s light down here, once your eyes adjust,” they offer, and the line lands less as comfort than as a survival instinct. It suggests a way of remaining present inside the dark long enough for something to shift. That idea threads through the piece gracefully, alongside another that surfaces more quietly but with equal force. It is the instinct to protect oneself from joy. To anticipate loss so fully that hope becomes something to manage rather than embrace. It is a response that feels both understandable and deeply human, and one that the production sits within without judgment or blame.
As someone who spends much of their time working with grief, I found myself returning to a familiar truth. Grief, I have described, is not simply pain that never goes away. It is the continuation of love, reshaped but not diminished, and something we may eventually come to accept, even recognize as part of what remains. The show does not state this outright, but that type of grief and that framing lives inside their show, allowing grief and joy to exist within The Bengsons’ shared space without forcing them into resolution.
The production, directed clearly by Rachel Chavkin (Broadway’s Hadestown), supports that emotional landscape through a carefully constructed environment that never overwhelms the intimacy at its core. The choreography by Steph Paul (NYTW’s How To Defend Yourself) allows the body to carry what language cannot fully hold, while music supervision by Or Matias (Signature’s Octet) shapes a sound that remains intimate even as it fills the space. Scenic design by Lee Jellinek (Broadway’s Marjorie Prime) grounds the piece in a home that feels both personal and symbolic, as the lighting by Alan C. Edwards (MTC’s Dakar 2000) and sound design by Nick Kourtides (NYTW’s The Object Lesson) shape a tonal world that moves between concert and confession, while the video design of David Bengali (NYTW’s We Live in Cairo) extends that space, layering memory and imagery in ways that deepen the emotional texture without overwhelming it.
Yet, even within that carefully constructed space, the production occasionally reveals its seams, slowly being pulled apart by an externalized tension. In its effort to create a shared ritual between performers and audience, the experience can feel overly self-aware and guided rather than discovered. The snowy path through the material is sometimes cleared in advance, as though we are being led toward meaning instead of trudging through the slush ourselves. The emotional honesty remains present, but the journey through it does not always feel entirely our own.
The final tonal shift towards a more celebratory register presents a similar challenge. It arrives with full open-hearted intention, but not always with the emotional continuity needed to carry it. The transition from deep grief into something more uplifted feels abrupt, as though the production reaches for resolution before the experience has fully settled into our bones. It gestures toward healing, but does not entirely connect.
What My Joy Is Heavy ultimately offers is not an answer, but an experience. It invites us to remain present with something unresolved, to listen carefully, and to accept that not all forms of pain transform neatly into something else. They become part of the emotional landscape we move through, and maybe even something to embrace as beautiful and important.
And that brings us back to that first image. The futon. The weight. That quiet persistence of feeling something deep and dark. Sitting there inside NYTW, watching two people find a way to stay with what has already taken hold, something begins to settle. This work of art and emotion is not about escaping grief, but about learning how to hold it. And in that shared space, something shifts, not into clarity, but into recognition.
