As we take our seats to see the show performer Steve Rodgers is already in the house, handing out different pieces of paper to various people in the audience. The significance of these notes is soon be revealed.
EVERY BRILLIANT THING starts with the house lights on and they are kept on throughout the performance.
Steve plays an anonymous man – age isn’t clear- growing up in a family where there is mental illness. His mother is a depressive, and attempts to take her life a number of times.
Early on in his life he comes up with an idea which is one of the main things that keeps him going. He- starts a list of the things that make him feel good, that give him joy. The list, in essence, is his brilliant things.It’s a list be can turn to when he is feeling down. And it’s a list that he shares with his mother, hoping that this will give her the much needed boost to lidt her out of her despair.
He has numbered the list and this is where the notes that he has handed to audience members come into play. Steve calls out the number and an audience member says, out loud, what the brilliant thing is. The notes had been passed around very democratically through the audience so a broad cross section of the audience became involved.
The show picks up momentum quickly. What Steve also does is to choose some audience members to become characters in his life . For example different audience members became his Dad, his school teacher, his girlfriend and so on…
The play flows seamlessly, directed by Kate Champion with co-direction by Rodgers himself. The play is the creation/brainchild of writers Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe, who has also performed in the role.
It’s not hard to work out why this play has been performed more than six hundred times over four continents. And why Belvoir has chosen to put on a return season, at the start of 2020. This is charming, clever, informal theatre. If you only go to the theatre on rare occasions during a year then choose this show as one of those times.
A year on, I still ponder whether the genesis for the play came from the playwrights reading lexicologist Barbara Ann Kipfer’s book ‘14,000 things to be happy about’ published in 1990. In it Kipfer compiles a list, a compendium of things which give her joy. Barbara compiled it over a 20 year period. and the book comes in at 600 pages. Exactly the kind of list that takes place in the play, except that Steve’s list climbs up to a million things!
Considering the interactive aspects of the show, what if Steve had reached out to members of the audience and asked what were some of their brilliant things that they would include in a list?! This would add another dimension to the show.
Anyhow, enough musing. This is a hot ticket. The show is wondrous as is Steve Rodgers’ performance. EVERY BRILLIANT THING is currently playing upstairs at Belvoir Street Theatre until Sunday 26th January 2020.
Featured pic – Steve Rodgers in ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ upstairs at Belvoir Street.