When receiving a diagnosis of cancer, it’s tempting to retreat into yourself, to shut out all friends and family, and bear the burden of an uncertain future alone. Yasmine (Brooke Ishibashi), the fortysomething heroine of the new chamber musical Night Side Songs, has that impulse — but she soon gathers a community around her. There’s her brash, TJ Maxx-loving mom (Mary Testa, delightfully brassy), her doctor and former middle school classmate (Robin de Jesús), and an old boyfriend who welcomes her back into his embrace despite the looming shadow of disease (Jonathan Raviv).

Daniel and Patrick Lazour, talented brothers who chronicled the Arab Spring in their 2024 musical We Live in Cairo, take a communal approach to their folk-inflected score (performed by pianist Alex Bechtel, with Kris Saint-Louis occasionally assisting on guitar or cello). The audience are all handed lyric books and encouraged to sing along to many of the songs, producing simple melodies that are deployed as rounds or background elements for the cast to layer in new harmonies or rhythms.

The effect is often lovely, matching the tone of a show that centers the collective nature of illness and care-giving. Despite the darkness of the material — the title is lifted from a Susan Sontag essay where she wrote, “Illness is the night side of life” — the Lazours and director Taibi Magar mostly steer clear of the maudlin. (One exception is a pretty but heavy-handed ballad from a mother to her dying child during the early days of chemotherapy 60 years ago, bizarrely assigned to de Jesús and showing no apparent connection to any of the present-day characters.)

The Lazours’ lyrics have spare simplicity that wavers between folksy and twee, but they lull you into a sense of gentleness and calm — and the fact that your neighbors are part of the chorus deepens the experience. We’re not merely voyeurs to Yasmine’s pain. We’re in this together, the show suggests, whatever the outcome for her. Night Side Songs is not only an act of bearing witness to the most painful moments in human existence, but also of extending a bit of yourself in support. ★★★☆☆

NIGHT SIDE SONGS
Clair Tow Theater at Lincoln Center, Off Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through March 29 for $39