Every Brilliant Thing

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Every Brilliant Thing is a brutal and evocative one-man production, anchored by its equally brilliant star Kate Mulvany. A celebrated writer, adapter and actor, she bears the weight of this meaty and moving text, written in 2015 by Duncan Macmillan and the play’s original star, Jonny Donahoe. 

Every Brilliant Thing tells the story of a daughter who, at seven, starts a list of every brilliant thing in the world, everything to be grateful for, after her mother’s first suicide attempt. 

Mulvany, brings her personal experience of grief – and more importantly, of love – to her performance (her partner died by suicide in 2008), and enlists the help of the audience, who are handed cue cards, to help her bring the story to life. 

From the first cry of Brilliant Thing #1 from an audience member (“Ice cream!”), the joy and vitality of this text, and this performance, is made clear. It’s funny and it’s warm and it’s fiercely real, as it examines how we – both in the media and as a society at large – talk or don’t talk about suicide and mental health issues, both with sufferers and those close to them. 

It also examines the real possibility that these issues can be generational, inherited, just a fact of your brain chemistry and genetics. And it speaks about all this bravely and honestly, with nuance, as a way to peel back layers of shame and discomfort. 

The production is directed with an eye for movement and physicality by Kate Champion, founder of dance theatre company Force Majeure, and by co-director Steve Rodgers, who takes on Mulvany’s role for the show’s Parramatta run next month. The other force driving this production is the intelligent sound design of Steve Francis, who cuts in with the perfect score for every moment.

Mulvany easily riffs with the audience as her character ages, finds her first love at university – which requires one audience member to take up a more active, onstage role – and grows into a troubled adult, who doesn’t recognise the optimism of her former self, the one who thought “people falling over” was so outrageously funny it makes life worth living. 

That interaction with the audience, seated in the round, is what the success of Every Brilliant Thing balances on. We’re enraptured by every second, carried along by the depth and clarity of Mulvany's performance, by the groundswells of laughter and by pangs of recognition, and by the sense that we’re all a part of something never to be repeated.