‘Every Brilliant Thing’ finds slivers of light in the dark | Review
“Every Brilliant Thing” is a storyteller’s play. In the one-person show, the narrator tells a very personal story —which starts on the day his mother tries to take her own life.
John O’Hurley, best known for “Seinfeld,” “Dancing With the Stars” and “The National Dog Show,” is the actor in Victory Productions’ “Every Brilliant Thing,” onstage at the Garden Theatre in Winter Garden. It’s a thoughtful production, a deeply felt production, but at times it starts to sink under its own heaviness.
In his playbill notes, director Bobbie Bell says he wanted to let “the poetry of the play speak for itself.” It does, beautifully, but as seen at an invitation-only preview some of the play’s charming lightheartedness is lost among all the serious business.
For “Every Brilliant Thing,” written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe, has a lot of serious business: O’Hurley narrates his character’s life starting at age 7 with an early experience with death, through awkward college romance and marriage, with observations on his relationships with his father and his suicidal mother, who suffers from mental illness.
But at the center of the play, which was adapted as an HBO film, is a wondrous list — a rolling log of “every brilliant thing” that makes life worth living. And it is the list that provides the needed relief to the darker elements of the story while creating the show’s unique participatory nature. Audience members are given numbered cards when entering the theater; as O’Hurley calls a number from the stage, representing something on the list, the audience member with the corresponding card shouts out its “brilliant thing” — ice cream, the color yellow, Marlon Brando, roller coasters and a particular favorite of young boys: peeing in the sea and nobody knows!
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O’Hurley excels at another component of this unusual show: Audience members are selected to play various figures that interact with his character. One portrays his dad, another a counselor, another his girlfriend. He’s gregarious and charming and quick with a quip when working with these surprise “guest stars,” and that all works in his and the show’s favor.
His natural gravitas also adds power to his character’s moving reflections on the vagaries of life — but can also work against the show when it comes time to lighten the mood or pick up the pace.
O’Hurley’s previous successes help cement his bond with the audience. A sequence in which his character watches his dog being euthanized hits home harder knowing the affection O’Hurley, the longtime host of “The National Dog Show,” has for canines. And a few dance moves bring smiles and laughter, remembering his hugely successful stint on “Dancing With the Stars.”
There’s a lot to like about the Garden-Victory “Every Brilliant Thing,” and I’m hoping that the play better balances the silly and the somber as it develops. That would make it just brilliant.
‘Every Brilliant Thing’
Length: 100 minutes, no intermission
Where: Garden Theatre, 160 W. Plant St. in Orlando
When: Through Sept. 24
Cost: $45-$75
Info: gardentheatre.org
Mental-health support: Interactive post-show discussions on the issues raised in the play, led by licensed mental-health professionals from Renew Counseling in Maitland, will follow the 7:30 p.m. Sept 14 and 2 p.m. Sept. 23 performances. Anyone experiencing a mental-health crisis can call 988 24 hours a day, seven days a week to speak with a health professional.
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