Night Side Songs – 26 February 2026

When I try to describe the experience of Night Side Songs, words fail me. Like all good theatre, it has many moving parts. Night Side Songs is part performance, part audience participation, part support group, part song circle, part poetry, part spoken words, part engagement, part holding on, part letting go, part holding space, part taking space, and part making space—to name a few. It is deeply healing and brings up feelings and fears hidden within all of us about losing our autonomy over our bodies or worse, caring for and losing the people who fill our lives with purpose and love. Night Side Songs accomplishes all of this with some simple instructions and a book of lyrics.

Night Side Songs depicts a young woman named Yasmine (Brooke Ishibashi) in her battle with terminal cancel, and her loved ones who bring their own personalities into her journey, namely her mother Desiree (Mary Testa) and her partner Frank (Jonathan Raviv), along with two additional cast members, Kris Saint-Louis and Robin de Jesus, playing other characters as needed. In addition to the roles that he plays, Robin de Jesus has the additional role of teaching the audience the songs, and using a combination of his own voice and a repeated set of gestures to indicate when the audience is invited to participate and when the audience should hold space for the actors to tell the next part of the story. Weaving together these moments, the audience is effectively the ensemble of the musical, while the cast members have highlighted character moments that advance the plot. The unspoken, most important thing the audience is invited to do is to feel this journey. Because we are active voices in creating the production, we are not merely watching the characters tell us their stories—we are invested in the knowledge that even if we have no personal connection to cancer or terminal illness, any one of us or any one of our loved ones could suddenly “enter the night side” while making Velveeta or shopping at TJ Maxx.

There are no dry eyes in the house as people leave Night Side Songs, yet, magically, seeing the show does not feel heavy. There are many moments of relatable levity surrounding family relationships, random vacations, reconnecting with a former lover, understanding a nurse’s day, having a glass of wine, taking a walk, and listening to a hodad live freely with his guitar. These moments are balanced with doctors doing cancer research, a relationship-ending search for Chock Full o’Nuts, and seeing loved ones at their absolute worst. The magic of Night Side Songs is in the attention to detail in the little moments that make people human. Even at the most critical moments, no one always knows the right thing to say or how to feel. This lack of knowing is what makes us human.

The set (Matt Saunders) is bare except for some glass bottles mounted from the ceiling that catch the light (Amith Chandrashaker) in interesting ways. The costumes (Jason A. Goodwin) are minimalist, and the sound design (Justin Stasiw) walks the balance between the audience hearing what they need to hear and also feeling like their contributions are being heard. The story shines, as does the healing philosophy of treasuring the moments we share with our loved ones and knowing when the right time is to let them pass onward to the next phase of their existence. Night Side Songs is beautiful, aching, passionate, and heartfelt—and utterly surprising in the gentle way it guides the audience into thinking about our own lives and wanting to be better. I left this performance viscerally moved.

I attended this performance on a press pass from DKC/O&M.