Every Brilliant Thing, a moving interactive play now onstage at Writers Theatre, has its roots in a 15-minute monologue Duncan Macmillan wrote for an actor friend in 2006. Now a one-act of around 70 minutes that debuted in 2013, the piece tells the story of a woman who started a list of wonderful things worth living for as a child after her mother attempted suicide.
It’s a heavy subject, but director Kimberly Senior and actor Jessie Fisher explore it with sensitivity, empathy and quite a bit of welcome humor. WT’s smaller Gillian Theatre has been transformed by scenic and costume designer Izumi Inaba into essentially a hangout space with a wide variety of seating types and environments in which to both watch the performance and participate in it.
That last bit is key. At the outset, Fisher walks through the audience handing out slips of paper, each containing one of the “brilliant things” from the list. Throughout the performance, she will call out numbers and the person with the corresponding list item will read it aloud. She also entices audience members to play characters such as a veterinarian who comes to the family home to put down her sick dog. On Sunday of opening weekend, the chosen audience members improvised miniature scenes with Fisher to great effect, though her effusive praise of these volunteer collaborators proved a bit distracting.
We follow the character from childhood to middle age as her mother attempts suicide repeatedly. After leaving home, the young woman falls in love with a classmate in college, marries her, and the two of them continue adding to the list as they build a life together. By the time the list is done, it reaches at least one million entries. The item I read was about how there’s usually a great song available to express any kind of feeling, which resonated strongly with me.
On the way in and out of the theater, patrons are encouraged to write their own brilliant things on sticky notes that are then displayed on the wall down the hallway. It’s a great reminder of all the reasons for living we take for granted, and the play does a nice job of driving that home.
Every Brilliant Thing runs through January 5 at Writers Theatre.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Michael Brosilow
