Every Brilliant Thing

My favourite show at the Edinburgh Fringe this year was Every Brilliant Thing, a play written by Duncan Macmillan and performed by Jonny Donahoe.

Following its humble beginnings at the Ludlow Fringe Festival in 2013, Every Brilliant Thing went on, in 2014, to garner hugely positive reviews at the Edinburgh Festival. It is a testament to the show’s enduring spirit that is was welcomed back this year and is yet again enjoying critical and public acclaim.

The show begins before the beginning with Donahoe giving slips of paper to most of the assembly, and chatting to individuals in the round. Having received no slip of paper, my curiosity was piqued: how would these props come into play? After a few minutes it would become abundantly clear why Donahoe chats amiably, navigating the room before the performance starts: he needs us for the piece to work.

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall.

Every Brilliant Thing commences with Donahoe the narrator informing us: “The list began after her first attempt. It was a present for my mum – everything worth fighting for. Things that at seven I thought were really good; not necessarily things my mum would agree with."

Number 1 (an audience member stands up and says): Ice cream.

Number 2 (an audience member stands up and says):Water fights.

Number 3 (an audience member stands up and says):Staying up late and watching TV.

Number 4 (an audience member stands up and says): The colour yellow.

Number 5 (an audience member stands up and says): Things with stripes.

Number 6 (an audience member stands up and says): Kind, old people that aren’t weird and don’t smell unusual.

Our narrator stands in the round telling his story about his list of ‘every brilliant thing’: how he came to write it, return to it and share it with the people he loved. It opens with him recounting his first brush with mortality: when he became cruelly aware of the precarious nature of being. He recounts how his dog's visit to the vet awakened this realisation in him. Here, the audience sees how this won’t be a typical play: a coat is co-opted from the audience to play the role of the dog, and a bearded student, plucked from the crowd, is through the magic wand of theatre turned into the Vet. Donahoe narrates his dog’s plight and gives the lines to the Vet to say. Suffering mild embarrassment in being turned into a participant, the ‘Vet’ smiles through his line about putting the dog down. Consequently, Donahoe breaks the forth wall, gently chastising the audience member for being the grinning face of euthanasia, and asks him to deliver the line again but this time with a modicum of respect for the lad's feelings. This audience participation is returned to again and again in the play with Donahoe’s background in circuit comedy (he is frontman of musical comedy duo, Jonny and the Baptists) allowing him to break character and respond quickly to whatever the ‘volunteer’ does.

Taking the dog to the Vet.

Donahoe then recounts the time when he first heard his mum was unhappy. His dad had come to pick him up from school, which he knew was a bad thing as his mum usually did it. Donahoe as a middle-aged man inhabits the tone and gesture of a child beautifully, accurately conveying bewilderment at a broken routine. The conversation between father and child isn’t re-enacted by the performer adopting two voices, instead he enlists a man in the audience to play the role of Dad. The man is given a sheet of paper with his part to read and instructed to pause after each line. As the Dad tells his son of the mum’s unhappiness, Donahoe’s boy responds with “why?” each time. The incessant repetition of a child is a well-known trope, therefore warm laughs of recognition are evoked; but alongside that is the poignant realisation that the child is asking these questions to comprehend the ineffable: Why is someone unhappy? They just are, sometimes won’t suffice. Within the opening ten minutes then there is a euthanasia scene and tacit reference to suicide, the fact that the tone remains warm is a credit to the writer who alleviates tension with well-timed jokes.

The story of Donahoe’s Narrator continues into adolescence where we’re updated on his mum’s progress. His mum is no better, which causes him to return to the list, but this time it isn’t done through wishful thinking: the naivety of believing it will remedy his mum’s illness is gone, rather it is done out of catharsis, the hope that in documenting joy he won't slip into his mother's despair. Donahoe calls a number and the audience member holding the corresponding sheet stands up and declares the brilliant thing. These call and response sections, placed between Donahoe’s moving narration, sweeten the pill, allowing us to find a fuse box of hope in the blackout of depression.

Donahoe with his pieces of paper.

A final thing worth mentioning is the music in the play. The Narrator mentions how his dad is a Jazz aficionado and how he could ascertain his father’s mood from the type of Jazz being played. Numbers by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman punctuate this exposition. The Narrator inherits this musical passion and talks effusively about the records that have shifted and lifted his weariness. In one beautiful scene he welcomes two audience members to come onto stage to hold a keyboard, advising them to move in a circle so the audience in the round can see the performance. At this point, the Narrator has met Sam, the apple of his eye and another number on his list; she has come for dinner and in true family tradition they take it in turns to sing songs round the piano. Donahoe's singing of Sam’s selection, Some Things Last a Long Time by Daniel Johnston, is a thing of aching beauty.

That is only a short section of the play. We find out more about the Narrator’s Mum and his relationship with Sam. We also get to hear more items on the list of Every Brilliant Thing. (When someone you lend a book to reads it) (When you watch a person watching your favourite film) (The way Ray Charles sings 'You') If I was to start a list, this play would be on it. High up the list, alongside ‘last minute winners for my home team,’ ‘recognising a pub has a quiz machine’ and ‘seeing a child be kind to another child.’ This play would be right up there because it treads a dark path very lightly, making sufferers of mental illness feel less alone. More importantly, it is an important play that wears its importance loosely. It isn't pious or moralising. It is tender and kind. 

It's my pick of the Fringe. 

Every Brilliant Thing is on tour from September. Details can be found here:  http://www.pentabus.co.uk/every-brilliant-thing

See below for the tour schedule and details on how