Review by Ron Fassler . . .
Daniel Radcliffe has the distinction of being a worldwide household name and face for twenty-five of his thirty-six years. The British-born actor first burst onto the screen as Harry Potter in 2001 and has proven himself a highly respected theatre actor ever since. Upon his fifth Broadway appearance two seasons ago, he won the Tony Award for his effortlessly engaging performance in the hit revival of Merrily We Roll Along. Now he is back at the Hudson Theatre with Every Brilliant Thing, by playwright and director Duncan MacMillan and comedian Jonny Donahoe, who first created the role at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013. If you enter the theatre with a feeling that you already like Radcliffe, you will leave loving him. He does an absolutely smashing job of it.
A one-person play with gracious assists from more than a few audience members to secure that Radcliffe isn’t entire alone in the endeavor, Every Brilliant Thing has become a global phenomenon over the past thirteen years, produced in 66 countries in more than 600 professional productions. The leading role, who goes unnamed, has been played previously by actors of various ages, sex, and ethnicities. In Radcliffe, it has perhaps found the perfect embodiment of someone with not only enormous charm but the skill and passion to cut deeper into the text.
Our narrator begins as a young boy of seven who is coping with a distracted father, too busy caring for his deeply depressed mother who has attempted suicide. As a way of uplifting her spirits, the boy begins creating a list of every brilliant thing he can think of beginning with #1—ice cream! This is shouted out at the proper moment when Radcliffe signals an audience member to read off a card that he’s given them prior to curtain time (it is indeed an extra treat that the actor interacts pre-show for as long as forty minutes with the audience). Some given more specific tasks allow for volunteers to be brought up on stage, guided and directed by Radcliffe, even to improvise lines (for an amateur to do this on a Broadway stage in front of a thousand people is a big ask). At the Saturday night preview I attended, the three principal players selected seemed to have been chosen with extra care and attention. They were all perfect, particularly the lovely woman called upon to portray a school librarian who helps more than she knows during one particularly difficult period in our protagonist’s childhood. I couldn’t imagine a real-life actor being more genuine.
As the narrator ages and matures (the play covers roughly twenty years), so too does the list. Here are three examples:
#1001: When someone actually reads the books you give them.
#2002: Seeing someone make it onto the train just as the doors are closing, making eye-contact and sharing this little victory.
#4888: Falling asleep as soon as you get on a plane, waking up when you land and feeling like you’ve teleported.
But do these aphorisms help his mother stave off her depression? And do they help our narrator in the search for his own peace and happiness? It’s all part of what passes for a plot and whether there’s enough meat on the bones here to offer sustenance is for each individual appetite. Personally, I left with a full and satisfied tummy.
Staged in the round, the 122-year-old Hudson has never looked more inviting. With seats in a horseshoe onstage, scenic designer Vicki Mortimer has put a wide staircase between the edge of the stage and the floor of the theatre and removed some seats up the center aisle to give Radcliffe room to roam. Jack Knowles’s lighting design adds warmth and the sound design by Tom Gibbons is excellent, though it can be tough from time to time to hear exactly what people are shouting out as they read off their cards (not really the sound designer’s job there). MacMillan has fluently co-directed the show with the versatile Jeremy Herrin, a Brit whose prior Broadway credits include his staging of the mammoth Wolf Hall, Parts One & Two (2015), Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off (2016), and the Cameron Crowe musical Almost Famous(2022). Like I said, versatile.
As Radcliffe recently told Playbill, “This play, because you are casting [different] people every night for it, and the interaction with the audience—there is a sort of happily inescapable authenticity that’s going to be there.” Showcasing his affability and unflappability, as well as an instinctive gift for improvisation, Radcliffe is truly in his element. As its chief author, Duncan MacMillan, has said about the play’s theatricality: “We ask a group of people to involve themselves in a show about how to deal with the hardest things we ever deal with—depression and loss and grief—and these are all things you can’t do alone.” All the spontaneously interactive aspects of Every Brilliant Thing are to be applauded which help make this a uniquely special event at the theatre.
Every Brilliant Thing is in a limited thirteen-week engagement through May 24th at the Hudson Theatre, 141 W 44th Street, NYC. For ticket information, click here.
Headline photo by Matthew Murphy.
