Daniel and Patrick Lazour, who bill themselves as The Lazours, are a pair of bold Arab American brothers, most recently proving themselves mightily with We Live in Cairo, a startling screed on revolutions and revolutionaries.
Out to underline their theatrical determination, they’re back and tackling the vast subject of illness. They springboard the new work with a quote by Susan Sontag from her probing 1978 Illness as Metaphor. Drawing from Sontag confirms, of course, that they mean business.
Sontag begins her weighty volume by stating, “Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship,” which explains the heft as well as the title of the Lazours’ 95-miinuter, Night Side Songs.
And the Side Songs part of the moniker indicates that the piece is a musical or, if not quite that, a play with music. Either way, it’s also something else—something more. Or perhaps for some audience members something less.
You see, it’s deliberately and blatantly a singalong. Throughout, audience members are invited, no, regularly encouraged to join the five cast members—Robin de Jesus, Brooke Ishibashi, Jonathan Raviv, Kris Saint-Louis, Mary Testa—in raising their voices.
Which calls for full disclosure: Though I write as a reviewer, I remain first and foremost an audience member. As such, my unyielding preference is not to participate. I’m present to watch and listen, not to become another member of the ensemble.
Consequently, that may require readers to accept that what follows are the observations of an audience member who kept his mouth zipped while others around me happily became the paying-customers chorus.
Crucially, the Lazours’ side songs are composed to enhance the Night Side Songs story of one woman’s illness. Early on, Yasmine Holly (Ishibashi), who’s constantly harangued by her mother Desirée (Testa), is diagnosed with cancer. Quickly treated—costs rising, by the way, to $49,701.76—she goes into remission.
Unfortunately, another cancer bout eventually ensues, ending much less satisfactorily. Yasmine, as it turns out, was initially treated with procarbazine, a drug that, as the script has it, leads to unfavorable side effects in the longer run. (Presumably, the Lazours researched this.)
Thereby, Yasmin‘s illness is the focus of the musicalized format, during which de Jesus, Raviv, and Saint-Louis play other characters—doctors, et cetera—populating her endangered life. This is just as they, along with Ishibashi and Testa, lead themselves and the audience in song. That’s to say, songs,
How does it all work? On entering patrons are handed—along with the Playbill—”The Night Side Songbook,” spritely-designed and including a list of the 12 Lazours’ songs to be delivered by one and all. (Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” is accorded a brief listen with no required group support.)
Daniel and Patrick have composed the songs to feature many repeated and easily grasped lines, all contained in the songbook. For the “Glow, Glow, Glow” lead-off ticket buyers, as prompted by the cast, to chant “Mm, Mm/Mm, Mm.” For “Either Way You Gotta Keep It Together,” the challenge is greater—”Mmm, Mmm, Mmm/Sometimes you don’t know/Sometimes you just know/Either way you gotta keep it together.” For “Let’s Go Walking”—“I appreciate your voice/I appreciate your voice.” Then, on and on along those lines through the remaining nine.
The less good news is that the score doesn’t impress as the Lazours at their best, though there are two stand-out ditties—the first called “Miracle Song.” (Alex Bechtel, in view upstage, easily handles the music direction and piano arrangements.) Otherwise, the music is pleasant enough as it passes—and passes and passes—but maybe not sufficiently to have spectators clamoring for a cast album as they exit.
There’s no arguing with the cast as they circulate Matt Saunders’ set: three high walls of tufted horizontal slats. Incidentally, where the players might have been annoyingly pushy, they’re consistently and agreeably encouraging. Okay, there is one clap-along.
Night Side Songs can assuredly boast of a stalwart cast, directed by deft Lazours collaborator Taibi Magar. Among them there’s one particularly accomplished member. Three-time Tony nominee (and multiple prize-winner elsewhere) Testa is at her best, as she always is. Just wait for her to go to town on “My Stuff,” the Lazours’ gritty second hot number. Any production is lucky to have this incomparable vet on board.
There’s no denying that the Lazours had something substantial in their sights. Too bad they don’t quite hit their target squarely.
Night Side Songs opened March 1, 2026, at the Claire Tow Theater and runs through March 29. Tickets and information: lct.org
