“Every Brilliant Thing” at the Hudson Theatre (Photo: Matthew Murphy)
Daniel Radcliffe is not content to rest on his laurels. The internationally recognized star of a massive film franchise, he has spent a lot of his career post-Potter on the stage, each time in a project that seems to take a sharp turn from the next. In the past ten years, I’ve seen him do a new play with Cherry Jones, tackle Beckett’s Endgame in London, and win a Tony for a Sondheim musical. Now, he’s back on Broadway in Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s Every Brilliant Thing, which could be called a solo play, but is actually so much more complicated than that.
Radcliffe is not just performing a monologue. (If you need that kind of thing, jump over a few blocks, Sean Hayes is doing it). MacMillan and Donahoe’s play incorporates the audience and makes them integral to the storytelling. The character’s mother has struggled with depression for a long time and after an event, her son decides to make a list of every brilliant thing in the world to show her how much there is to live for.
Before the play begins, pieces of the list are distributed to people in the audience, so that when Radcliffe shouts a number from the stage, the person who holds that card can read it. But he also enlists us to play his teacher, his lover, and his father, which requires certain people to share scenes with him, to listen and react to what he’s saying. And it might require Radcliffe to adlib. He’s not stuck in a rigidly-structured monologue, there is a freedom – and necessity – to commune with the room. It’s a fresh, unique way to do theatre, but it’s clearly not easy.
Radcliffe is triumphant at it, though. It’s a naturalistic, open-hearted performance, almost as if he’s not acting. You get the impression that this is what he’s like if you’re just having a chat. And, even if it’s not – especially if it’s not, that only proves the extent of the skill on display. He’s so kind to everyone he interacts with, so helpful and understanding. He makes the extensive audience participation (usually something I find abhorrent) somehow feel safe and vital, as if these two people absolutely must connect.
Jeremy Herrin directs with Macmillan and they’ve amped up a generally small-room sort of show for Broadway. Vicki Mortimer’s set design places three banks of seats on the stage and then opens the proscenium and stage front to the audience with a welcoming set of stairs. It’s a simple solution; where the stage front usually indicates an imaginary, though impenetrable, fourth wall, Mortimer has demolished those transparent bricks and invited everyone into the same space.
Granted, I was very close to the stage, but it still felt like Herrin, Macmillan, and Radcliffe were able to envelop all 970 of us in this small, personal story. I can’t begin to imagine the logistics required to get each performance going, let alone the infinite hours of pre-production planning. But the result feels effortless, even while appreciating Radcliffe’s mammoth undertaking. It truly feels like we’re all at a party, celebrating life and all the little every day things that make it worth living. It’s a balm in a troubled time, at least for seventy minutes. As the character’s list wrapped up at the end of the night, I thought the real final number should be this production.