Every Brilliant Thing presents a theatrical gauntlet for Daniel Radcliffe, the erstwhile Harry Potter, acclaimed Broadway stage regular and only star of this 13-week limited engagement.
It’s not that the show requires nonstop physical exertion – though it does require some, as in a scene of manic exuberance where Radcliffe’s character attempts to high-five the entire audience – so much as a quick-on-his-feet reactive (and interactive!) warmth. While Radcliffe is the only professional actor in the show, its framework involves pulling audience members, including but not limited to those in a semi-circle of on-stage seats, into the action, all while making sure the sorta-monologue (call it a monologue-plus) runs smoothly. This hybrid of acting, interacting and stage-directing must be exhausting. But apart from a few quick water breaks and one built-in collapse after sprinting around the aisles and doing those high-fives, Radcliffe doesn’t much show it. He appears to genuinely love the job, which requires either superhumanly high spirits or terrific acting. Maybe both.
It does not, however, require stunning playwrighting. The monologue-plus from writer and co-director Duncan Macmillan sounds autobiographical in its earnest, plainspoken, characterization-light narrative: an unnamed narrator speaks directly to the audience about his experiences with depression, beginning with his mother’s suicide attempt when he was only seven. In an attempt to help her get better, he starts a list of “brilliant” things that make life worth living. (Presumably this seven-year-old has not seen the movie Manhattan, which features a grown adult compiling a similar ongoing list; it’s less clear whether Macmillan has.) The list forms the backbone of the play’s audience-participation element: when Radcliffe calls out a number from the list, a designated audience member will read a corresponding item. (No 1 is ice cream.) This is apparently worked out quickly beforehand; the audience members are genuine, not plants, but also not surprised at random.
As years go by and the narrator grows from child to teenager to college student to adult, the list grows in fits and starts – even as he questions its effectiveness, especially in the area of helping his up-and-down mother or his less volatile father, who is not especially demonstrative, emotionally speaking. For that matter, the narrator must also confront whether he, too, might be afflicted with the depression that plagues his mother, and how it might affect his own relationships.
The language Macmillan employs in this chronicle is accessible and straightforward – almost to a fault. This is a play that is clearly and admirably concerned with doing and saying the right things; it’s part of the text that treatment of suicide in media can accidentally glorify it, and it’s clearly front of Macmillan’s mind that his work avoids that danger as much as possible while maintaining an affirming sensibility. At times, the combination of whimsical observations, an instructional tone and Radcliffe’s particular cadence starts to resemble a John Oliver monologue, only without political barbs or profane absurdities inserted as asides. The laugh lines here are sweet-natured, but often cornily fixated on cute relatability.
The strain to find that relatability becomes more visible with the knowledge that Every Brilliant Thing is not actually straight autobiography. Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but tearing these experiences directly from the playwright’s life might afford the show some leeway when it starts to sound more like a PSA than a transporting piece of fiction. As is, even some of the more detail-oriented motifs, like recurring thoughts on the tactility of listening to music on vinyl while examining the liner notes, feel calculated to prompt easy nods of recognition.
This leaves the show’s audience participation, so potentially dicey or cringe-inducing, to introduce a feeling of genuine spontaneity. It does, and Radcliffe runs with it. Beyond the list call-outs, a few audience members are drawn into the on-stage action, standing in for a variety of figures: the father, a college professor, an empathetic school librarian and even the narrator’s first real boyfriend. These moments exist at an intersection of improv, trust exercise and prank; the biggest laughs in the show come from Radcliffe appearing to put his volunteers on the spot for potential embarrassment, and some of its most heartwarming moments derive from how they inevitably rise to the occasion without actually needing to work up amazing ad libs.
Like a lot of Every Brilliant Thing, this trick doubles as a lesson – in this case, about the power of just listening, in performing and in real life. That alertness keeps the show humming for its single 70-minute act, even as its straight text reads like something a precocious college student might write. Basically, the show works because Radcliffe more or less wills it to. It would be misleading to call his performance a high-wire act, because he intentionally stays closer to the audience’s level. As a medium-wire act, though, it’s still plenty brilliant.
