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Daniel Radcliffe in Every Brilliant Thing.
Credit: Matthew Murphy |
The Daniel Radcliffe vehicle Every Brilliant Thing, currently at the Hudson after a transfer from London, is ostensibly a solo show. The former Harry Potter star is the only cast member listed in the program. Yet the show really features one of the largest ensembles on Broadway. Before its 85 minutes have elapsed almost the entire audience has taken part in this moving, intimate yet expansive meditation on depression and recovery, performed with energy, wit and compassion by Radcliffe.
Originally produced at the Edinburgh Festival and later Off-Broadway during the 2014-15 season, Brilliant involves its audience to amazing extent. An unnamed protagonist relates his childhood-to-adult story of compiling a list of all the things that make life worth living in response to his mother’s repeated suicide attempts. Theatergoers are given post-its with items on the list and read them out when called upon. Additional spectators take on the roles of the hero’s long-suffering dad, understanding school counselor, sympathetic love object (male at performance attended), and many others. This is a joyous and heartwarming experience as the patrons cry out “Ice cream” and “Water fights,” though it was difficult to make out some of the longer entries when it was clear the audience member did not have vocal training and Tom Gibbons’ sound design could not entirely clarify their remarks.
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Daniel Radcliffe in Every Brilliant Thing.
Credit: Matthew Murphy |
Duncan MacMillan’s text, written with Jonny Donahoe who performed the role in the original production, combines humor and pathos in exploring the depths of grief and clinical depression. (MacMillan also effectively directed with Jeremy Herrin.) For example, the protagonist relates a simultaneously funny and devastating story about having to put to sleep his beloved boyhood canine, Indiana Bones. The versatile Radcliffe elicits equal measures of guffaws and tears while calling on an audience member to play the caring vet to perform the necessary procedure. Radcliffe is empathetic and vital throughout, racing up and down the aisles, connecting with the audience, and conveying the hero’s struggle to combat the veil of sorrow inherited from his mom.
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Daniel Radcliffe with audience member
in Every Brilliant Thing.
Credit: Matthew Murphy |
Set designer Vicki Mortimer has transformed the space into a theater-in-the-round with audience members on the stage surrounding the action, facilitating Radcliffe’s athletic, peripatetic performance. It’s exciting to see this former child star mature into one of Broadway’s leading dramatic actors.
While Brilliant’s only character undergoes a traumatic emotional metamorphosis, Bughouse’s (Vineyard Theater) sole performer is on a static straight line. Adapted from the works and writings of outsider artist Henry Darger this one-man piece depicts Darger’s tragic childhood in an asylum and lonely adult life. His mistreatment as a child led him to become obsessed with such abuses. While working as a janitor, he produced numerous art works and thousands of pages of fantasy fiction depicting an enslaved child rebellion against oppressive adults. His collection was only discovered after his death when his two-room Chicago apartment was cleaned out. His work was posthumously included in museum collections.
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John Kelly in Bughouse.
Credit: Carol Rosegg |
The credentials for Bughouse are impressive. Legendary director-choreographer Martha Clarke staged the work, adapted by Pulitzer Prize-winner Beth Henley from Darger’s memoirs and fiction. Neil Patel designed a detailed and fascinatingly cluttered set illuminated by Christopher Akerlind’s spectral lighting and John Nauru’s projections which place Darger’s haunting watercolors on the windows. Obie winner John Kelly feelingly embodies the damaged Darger, but he doesn’t change or come to any dramatic realizations over the course of the brief running time. He re-enacts the slights and cruelties visited on him by bullies and nuns, but that’s all that happens.
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Cast of Burnout Paradise.
Credit: Austin Ruffer |
To return to audience participation, a return engagement of Burnout Paradise at the Astor Place Theater elicits patrons’ involvement as much as Every Brilliant Thing, but the production’s goal is not emotional intimacy, but chaotic fun. Created by the Australian collective Pony Cam, Burnout features four cast members on treadmills in a race against time preforming a series of tasks while a fifth acts as host and time-keeper. It sounds crazy and pointless but is actually a lot of fun. The audience ascends the stage to help out as the quartet prepares a three-course meal (with hand-made pasta), applies on-line for a grant, acts out “To Be or Not To Be” from Hamlet, folds Origami birds, and checks off a challenging to-do list. It’s goofy, crazy onstage insanity, full of laughs, spills, and riotous community. At the performance attended, Ava Campbell, William Strom, Dominic Weintraub and Chan Lin were the inventive, incredibly able runners and Carl Bryant served as even-tempered emcee. A merry, whacky evening, perfect for these stressful times.
Every Brilliant Thing: March 12—May 24. Hudson Theater, 141 W. 44th St., NYC. Running time: 85 mins. with no intermission. us.atgtickets.com.
Bughouse: March 11—April 5. Vineyard Theatre, 108 E. 15th St., NYC. Running time: 70 mins. with no intermission. vineyardtheater.org.
Burnout Paradise: March 5—June 28. Astor Place Theater, 434 Lafayette St., NYC. Running time: 75 mins. ticketmaster.com.
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