The indie folk-rock duo known as the Bengsons have been a regular fixture on Off Broadway stages over the last decade (and even made an appearance on Broadway last year performing Stephen Merritt tunes in the star-filled comedic reading show All In). It’s easy to see why: Abigail and Shaun Bengson are a married couple who have the look, feel, and musical sensibility of middle-aged Brooklyn hipsters. She wears her frizzy hair loose, with a shock of gray rising from her forehead, while he sports glasses and a gingerish beard.
At the top of the show, they encourage the audience to take bathroom breaks (despite the 80-minute running time) or to pick up fidget spinners from a basket left at the door of the auditorium. They also introduce all the members of the six-person band and stage crew and point out a narrow strip above the stage where the text will be supercaptioned.
This is theater as safe space, which makes sense since the Bengsons have developed a reputation for composing and performing musically sophisticated tunes that touch on serious themes like the pandemic, cancer, aging parents, and the like. Their latest song cycle, My Joy Is Heavy, focuses on another pandemic-era domestic drama — when they and their toddler son, Louie, moved in with Abigail’s mom in Vermont and tried to have another baby.
They’re remarkably open about the roadblocks on their “fertility journey.” The fact that Abigail’s new pregnancy is considered “geriatric” since she’s over 35. The awkwardness of living at home with her mom while they’re trying to conceive. And the known risks since their first child died shortly after his birth — a tragedy they share in a poetic and bitterly ironic tune called “Easy” that evokes the depth of their loss in lyrics like “Hold me in the shatter of a life / in the cracking of a tiny goodbye.” It’s a song that suits Abigail’s well-trained voice, which is given to runs that can sound like yodels or wails of grief, as well as Shaun’s more folk-rocky baritone.
While they’re open about their battles with depression, the Bengsons focus their show on the tools they activated to power through their setbacks. One secret weapon they deploy is humor, as when Abigail defines her diagnosis with PTSD as “the miraculous ability to travel through time, but only to the worst moments of your life.” Together, they practice a kind of perseverance through activity. They trade off on child-care duties when one is down and identify sources of happiness that they choose to privilege over conflict or wallowing in grief. Chief among their comforts is their towheaded son, whose image we see in David Benjali’s video and photo projections on a set, by Lee Jellinek, that suggests a wood-framed house still under construction.
My Joy is Heavy culminates in a happy-sad anthem that recalls a New Orleans funeral march, with the whole brass-forward band marching around the auditorium and moving in sync (to choreography by Steph Paul). It’s an apt ending for a big-hearted look at one creative couple’s bumpy experiences with life in all its messiness. Rachel Chavkin directs. ★★★☆☆
MY JOY IS HEAVY
New York Theatre Workshop, Off Broadway
Running time: 80 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through April 5 for $49 to $103