The company of Night Side Songs. Photo: Marc J. Franklin

In Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, characters fear that discussing cancer will bring catastrophe; they refuse to even say the word above a whisper. Off-stage Americans have also been loath to confront serious illness; one quarter of American adults polled in 2023 said they would rather not know if they had cancer, and nearly a third avoided doctor visits out of fear. Night Side Songs, the sweet homespun musical now playing at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater, takes the opposite approach, closely documenting a woman’s battle with illness by looking directly at the thing we go through such pains to avoid.

Daniel and Patrick Lazour, the fraternal writing team behind the show, waste no time in getting yasmine (Brooke Ishibashi) diagnosed. Over the course of a decade (give or take), she gets sick, goes into remission, and then gets sick again. In that time, of course, she also lives: she falls in love, argues with her mother (Mary Testa), deals with the death of a loved one—the things we all go through.

The unassuming story becomes a palette for director Taibi Magar’s self-assured staging. Despite the almost complete lack of set (the asterisk is Matt Saunders’s sculpture floating overhead) and the performers’ constant shifting between many roles, there’s never any confusion about what we’re watching. That the show moves fluidly between locations and times without stopping to explain itself (helped by Amith Chandrashaker’s elaborate and creative lighting cues, Justin Stasiw’s soundscape, and Jason A. Goodwin’s bare-bones costumes) is a sign of its respect for the audience, a trust that we can use our imagination to complete the unfinished sentences, that we are paying attention. The evening becomes a collaboration between the artists and the viewers in a very satisfying way.

Being present isn’t the only way the viewer is asked to participate; we’re also called upon to perform. About half of the singing is done with the audience as chorus (or at least those who want to—there’s no arm twisting), backing up the five singers. The terrific Robin de Jesús is our conductor, instructing us on our parts and helping us keep tempo. The songs are easy enough to learn on the fly, and the singalong adds to the musical’s good-natured vibe.

The five-person cast works together with the practiced professionalism of a top-notch sports team. Ishibashi and Jonathan Raviv do great physical work as lovers yasmine and frank (the script seems to take issue with capital letters), and Mary Testa provides a brassy counterpoint as, among other parts, yasmine’s slightly tone-deaf mother, desiree. Kris Saint-Louis, who plays too many roles to keep count, infuses the show with his positive energy.

It’s a vibe that works. I was fully engaged throughout (so much so that I failed to spot friends who were seated directly across the thrust stage), I never felt awkward about singing despite a hereditary harmonic deficiency; I was moved; and I was left with things to think about. I was asked to ponder something that makes me uncomfortable and I did and it was good.

But there’s a tradeoff. The active participation is sometimes distracting. Trying to follow along with the many lyrics of the song “When You…” means you can’t watch what’s happening on stage (I chose to stop singing halfway through). Relying on amateurs to perform limits the songs’ complexity. And as much as I love singing in public without being judged (honestly, I do), and as great as some of my fellow audience members were, I made the mistake of listening to the Lazours singing “Into the Sky” on the show’s website. The audience can’t handle the slightly challenging rhythm and turns in a meh performance. But the brothers’ interpretation (and those beautiful harmonies) make me ache for more. I feel a little cheated that I didn’t get to see that show.