Ross Zentner
Actor David Daniel helps the audience form a bond throughout the evening.
It is virtually impossible not to begin making your own list of wonderful, joyful things after seeing Every Brilliant Thing, by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe. The third play in Forward Theater’s 2019-2020 season is a one-person show that is a meditation on suicide, mental illness, family, pain, and all of the things in the world that counteract that pain. In fact, it is about a list of 1 million things that make life extraordinary:
• Antique typewriters
• The way babies smell
• Palomino Blackwing pencils
• No Shame Theatre
During my college days at the University of Iowa, I was an avid attendee of No Shame Theatre, a student-run open mic that took place in an otherwise empty Theater B at 11 o’clock on Friday nights. One week, a student I knew wrote a sketch about the best and worst ways to die. The best way to go was through a testosterone overdose. (We were college kids, after all.) The worst way was by tripping over your own two stupid feet and falling face first into the silverware rack of an open dishwasher, because not only was your death pointless, but then someone had to do the dishes again. This illustrated to me that talking about death onstage could be very funny. It was less funny a few years later, when the author committed suicide by hanging himself.
This is the province of Every Brilliant Thing. For a play that is about suicide at its core, the piece is extremely funny. And then there are the other moments. It is a credit to David Daniel, the sole actor in the piece, that the story he pieces together for us is such an engrossing, delicate and compelling tale. Using a string of anecdotes about a mother with mental illness, a distant father, and the emotional confusion of his childhood and adolescence, he speaks candidly about the tragedy of untreated mental illness, of suicide and the effect of a sudden loss on family and friends.
Daniel, a core company member at American Players Theatre, also takes many opportunities to be silly. He shouts to the rafters about the pleasure of the color yellow and the intense satisfaction of pulling an entire piece of wallpaper off a wall, intact. At one point he maniacally announces he is going to high five the entire audience — and then gives it his absolute, best try. Exhausted, he lies down on the tan braided rug that is most of the set and revels in the simple pleasure of sweating profusely in public. When an audience member reads one of his favorite “brilliant things” off a slip of paper, he frequently emits a high pitched wheeze of delight. Occasionally he exudes the energy of a motivational speaker, selling his brand of “Chicken Soup for the Soul” stories to be happy about. It’s the juxtaposition of these stories and the vulnerability of the man telling you these stories that really sets Every Brilliant Thing apart.
Music also plays a large role in this show. It is evocative of both pleasant and terrible memories, it takes the place of conversations that were desperately wished for, it telegraphs the mood of the main character’s father, and it is a way for him and his father to find refuge and peace — by listening to vinyl records (the sound quality is really better, you know) while reading the liner notes from the sleeve.
The show starts with the song “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,” and music weaves its way in and out of the list of “brilliant things,” including the way Ray Charles sings the word “you” and the way the main character’s then-fiancée sang “Some Things Last a Long Time.”
By transforming Overture’s Playhouse Theater into a theater in the round, with several rows of seating on risers placed on the stage, director Tyler Marchant has created a flexible playground for Daniel. He spends some time in the small center of the oval playing space, along with a record player and a chair, but Daniel also frequently leaps up into the aisles — all of the aisles — and even inserts himself in a seat mid-row to have a conversation with an audience member. His moments of frenetic movement are energizing. His moments of stillness are arresting.
At a time when theaters are trying to define for prospective audiences why going to a live theater event is still exciting, worth the time and money and different from anything you can experience on Netflix, Every Brilliant Thing is a perfect answer. It is communal. The lights never go down. The audience is present, and quickly forms a bond as a select group on a journey together. But unlike a snarky stand-up routine, the participants are never the butt of the joke. They are treated as fellow travelers who are necessary for the play to continue. And perhaps the most poignant message of the play is that when you are on the spot, when you need them the most, complete strangers will be there for you.
Read Rice’s full review, including her list of more “brilliant things” at gwendolynrice.com
