From left: Noga Cabo, Shaun Bengson, Abigail Bengson, Ashley Baier, and Matt Deitchman discover that sorrow and joy can exist in the same breath in the indie folk-punk show, My Joy is Heavy.
In My Joy is Heavy, a raw yet warmly disarming musical memoir, musician-actors Abigail and Shaun Bengson open the doors of their family life and loss to the audience. Under the sensitive direction of Rachel Chavkin, the production blurs the boundary between stage and house, transforming private grief into a communal—and unexpectedly joyful—theatrical encounter.
Shaun brings some gritty harmony to one of the musical numbers in the show, as Abigail, beside him, wails like a banshee.
This self-portrait finds the Bengsons—a married couple in life—weathering a Vermont winter in pandemic isolation at Abigail’s mother’s home. Amid the strain of quarantine, they resolve to expand their family, but the resulting pregnancy—Abigail’s third—ends in loss, reframing their hopes through grief.
First commissioned in 2021 as a 27-minute virtual piece for Arena Stage, My Joy is Heavy has since grown into a 70-minute work that remains strikingly concise while deepening its emotional reach. The current staging expands the score with additional folk-punk numbers and a live onstage band, amplifying both the immediacy of the storytelling and its communal pulse.
Before the play proper begins, Abigail and Shaun, joined by their band, gather near the audience to introduce the evening as a “relaxed house.” With disarming humor, Abigail explains that spectators are free to move about as needed—“If you have to get up and pee, we won’t be offended. I’m in pelvic floor therapy, and I’m peeing right now.” Shaun, equally candid, notes that the performance is 94.3 percent captioned, reflecting his own experience as someone who is hard of hearing, and gestures to the ensemble who will help tell the story, occasionally “popping up … wearing a wig or glasses.”
Amid the strain of the pandemic-induced quarantine, Abigail realizes that she, more than anything else, wants to have another baby. Photographs by Marc J. Franklin.
Though structured as a musical cri de cœur, the Bengsons’ self-portrait never tips into exhibitionism. Instead, it invites the audience to traverse their own memories alongside those of the performers, making the porous fourth wall central to the show’s quietly powerful sense of shared catharsis.
In one especially resonant sequence, Abigail asks the audience to recall the pandemic—how the line between life and death drew perilously close—and the many who died. Lifting a potted plant, she says, “Let’s put them here,” handing it to a front-row audience member: “Will you take care of them? It’s like 70 minutes—they love the ground.” She then invokes the “pandemic babies,” placing another plant “along with the not-yet-born.” The quiet zinger follows: “And then there was the rest of us, who were not born, but did not die. I will put us here.” With a simple gesture toward the audience, she confers a renewed sense of life on each of us.
The production returns one to the suspended time of lockdown, immersing viewers in that first winter in Abigail’s mother’s cluttered home (set design by Lee Jellinek), which she wryly describes as “less Norman Rockwell and more Donner party.” While the family avoids such extremes, they endure profound strain—Abigail grappling with PTSD, Shaun with depression—even as she finds herself longing “to have a baby.” Home-video footage, projected on a screen upstage, brings this period into intimate focus, capturing the family’s daily rhythms and their search for a hard-won, elusive joy. Then, to rupture the stasis, a trumpet swells, and Abigail and Shaun launch into “Underground”:
Shaun and Abigail share an emotional moment together, looking at the positive results of Abigail’s pregnancy test in My Joy is Heavy.
I’ve been underground
In a deep dark cave
Doing my best to stay alive.
The show fully earns its title, unfolding as a brassy songfest that confronts life’s harsher truths. Abigail’s voice, wailing like a banshee, soars above Shaun’s lower-register harmonies as he shifts between guitar and keyboard. Among the standout numbers, the duet “Veil” distills the paradox of motherhood with piercing clarity:
This is becoming a mother
Infinite love
And zero control.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the show culminates in a frenetic dance break: a strobe-lit cascade of deliberately unbridled movement that turns Abigail and Shaun into near-dervishes, driving the evening toward a hard-won catharsis.
The Bengsons have carved out a distinctive niche in the theater world with what they call a “crisis Liederkreis,” a musical style that traverses dark, high-stakes emotional terrain. Before My Joy is Heavy, the Bengsons created the acclaimed musical memoirs Hundred Days (a folk-rock chronicle of their rapid courtship and fear of loss) in 2017 and The Lucky Ones (a wounded autobiography) in 2018. More recently, they developed The Keep Going Songs (2024), a project centered on community, grief, and joy.
In the end, My Joy is Heavy doesn’t so much resolve grief as reframe it, revealing how sorrow and joy can coexist in the same breath. The Bengsons, with remarkable openness and musicality, transform private pain into a shared, living experience—one that lingers long after the final note fades.
My Joy is Heavy plays through April 5 at New York Theatre Workshop (79 E. 4th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit nytw.org.
Book, Lyrics & Music: The Bengsons
Direction: Rachel Chavkin
Choreography: Steph Paul
Scenic Design: Lee Jellinek
Sound Design: Nick Kourtides
Costume Design: Hahnji Jang
Lighting Design: Alan C. Edwards
Music Director: Matt Deitchman
