‘I wanted to give people hope’: how Every Brilliant Thing became theatre’s best antidote to depression

An uplifting play about depression, Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing has become a global phenomenon since its Edinburgh fringe debut 10 years ago. It has been performed in 63 countries in around 400 professional productions, and is hugely popular with amateur companies. Now its original star and co-author Jonny Donahoe is back in the role at the fringe, in a revival directed by Macmillan.
The play’s conceit is simple. In response to his mother’s suicide attempt, a young boy makes a list of all the things worth living for – like water-fights, ice-cream and “things with stripes”. As he gets older the list keeps growing. The magic lies in the way the audience are invited to participate. They are assigned lines and even roles in the story. Almost everyone contributes and a community is created.
Every Brilliant Thing grew out of a monologue that Macmillan wrote. He developed it with director George Perrin, then joint artistic director of new writing company Paines Plough. They invited Donahoe – one half of musical-comedy duo Jonny and the Baptists, with a knack for improvisation – to come on board. Many of Donahoe’s contributions were incorporated into the text. “I didn’t ever pick up a pen, but I generated a lot of things in the room,” he says.
After some tryouts they took it to the 2014 fringe, where there was a spare slot that needed filling. Positive reviews followed and the show became one of the success stories of that year’s festival. Not long afterwards they were invited to perform it in New York for five weeks off-Broadway at the Barrow Street theater.
After Donahoe stopped performing it in 2017, productions started to multiply. The play is written in such a way that directors and performers can tailor it to their own cultural context. Melina Theo starred in the Greek premiere of the play, which “infused the text with references to Greek popular culture from the 90s,” she says. “We edited the list to include some of the favourite things of our generation, and weaved in snippets of Greek popular songs”. At one point in the show she would “start quietly singing Serenata, a classic 80s tune that resonated deeply with the audience. Every night, as I sang, the audience would join in.”
The format of the show makes it capable of touching people in a very direct and powerful way. One woman with experience of depression messaged Theo to say that the moment when she looked her straight in the eye while saying the line “things always get better” had a positive effect.
Oliver Chong performed the play for Singapore theatre company the Finger Players while Covid restrictions were in place. His performance proved so popular they revived it for full-capacity audiences, and he is now remounting it with a younger female actor in the role. Like Theo, he added locally recognisable songs as well as specific things to the list of brilliant things, like a brand of ice-cream instantly recognisable to his generation and “handmaking the ugliest kite you can” at a park popular with kite-flyers in Singapore.
As someone who has depression himself, Chong found Every Brilliant Thing personally resonant, as he suspects did many people – particularly as audiences were still dealing with the emotional aftermath of the pandemic. “I thought doing this play would give people some form of hope.”
Bianka Lammert, who starred in the play at Dortmund theatre in Germany, initially performed it in October 2020 under social distancing restrictions. Even after these were lifted, she and her director decided not to change the staging. “The physical distance helps many viewers give free rein to their feelings,” says Lammert. Solo performances let an actor really connect with the audience, she adds, and “this piece offers everything you need to experience a moment together”.
It is important to Lammert to have “a brief personal moment with each audience member after the play”, so she says goodbye to everyone as they leave. “That wasn’t planned, but we’ve shared an intimate moment, and I don’t want to let anyone leave the theatre without a smile.”
The play’s adaptability is vital to its success, says Donahoe. “It’s really important that people do their own versions. It’s not a museum piece.” In fact Macmillan himself has tweaked the text for the new version, to reflect shifts in the ways the media deal with suicide. Ultimately though, Donahoe attributes the success of the play to its form. “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.”
Every Brilliant Thing is at Roundabout, Summerhall, until 24 August