NEW YORK — If there were a Tony Award on offer for Broadway’s Most Interactive Star, Daniel Radcliffe would be a shoo-in, even at this early juncture of the spring season.
Even as the Hudson Theatre was still filling up, the star of the Harry Potter movie franchise (and much theater after that) was bobbing and flitting from row to row, exuding equal parts friendliness and determination of purpose. Along with his little beard, seemingly doubling as a directional compass, he was chatting just a few feet from me as I took my spot and I got a kick for the next several minutes as people did double-takes over the identity of the seat-mate who had suddenly come and gone while they were fussing with their programs.
Let’s stipulate that there are plenty of star actors who would rather enter the seventh circle of hell than do what Radcliffe is doing here with boundless enthusiasm — reflective of his career-long determination to challenge himself. Let’s further stipulate that communing with a celebrity, ideally a very talented celebrity, has been a part of what Broadway has been selling for a century or more. People are here to see Radcliffe and, if you are seated downstairs at least, close-up sightings are guaranteed and Genuine Personal Moments certainly far more likely than elsewhere on the Rialto.
It’s also a necessity here, given the nature of the material.
“Every Brilliant Thing” has its origins in a solo performance at a British fringe festival, as written by Duncan Macmillan and co-penned and performed by the British comedian Jonny Donahoe. It was first seen in New York at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2014 and later was filmed by HBO. Since then, it has been performed across much of the world, being ideally suited to these impecunious times and very masterfully written.
The premise is as simple as the 75-minute running time is brief. The one and only character (Radcliffe, playing the role of “Cast”) discovers as a child that his mother has attempted to kill herself and he sets out on what turns out to be a lifelong quest to persuade her that life is always worth living, which, when you really think about it, is the most honorable quest in the great book of honorable quests.
First employing the logic of a child, he achieves this by making an ever-expanding list of all the excellent things in the world: these range from simple pleasures like “the color yellow” and “rollercoasters” to the exuberantly wacky, especially as the character grows older, such as “the possibility of dressing up as a Mexican wrestler,” something that keeps me going on a Monday morning, for sure.
To theatricalize what otherwise would be an autobiographical monologue, Macmillan and Donahoe came up with the idea of having their audience members read the various items on the list, such as, “knowing someone well enough to get them to check your teeth for broccoli,” as handed to them on slips of paper prior to the show. Then they took things a step further, inviting audience members to portray certain pivotal figures in the character’s life, such as his empathetic teacher/mentor, Mrs. Patterson, his girlfriend and his dad.
I should disclose here that this was my fourth viewing of “Every Brilliant Thing,” directed on Broadway by Jeremy Herrin and Macmillan, and so the surprises were few for me, although I still fondly recall the first time I experienced this material and marveled at its warmth, humor and, frankly, its overall tone of affirmative positivity and human kindness. This is also one of those shows that centers on what an audience takes away in a thoroughly customer-service kind of way — indeed, that is its entire purpose for being, which sets it apart from most other plays on Broadway, which more typically express the point of view of the writer and just hope the audience comes along. And does not always care if it does not.
When you think of all the questionable celebrity casting to be found on Broadway, the choice of Radcliffe for this piece really stands apart. That’s not just reflective of his ticket-moving celebrity and engagingly vulnerable stage presence, although both of those things are true.
It’s also much to do with how an audience remembers him, which would mostly be as Harry Potter, a comparison that is very shrewdly in play. Yet more fundamentally, that shared memory likely is from when both they and he were children. In a bar before the show, I heard tell of a different performance where Mrs. Patterson was played by someone who really had helped Radcliffe on those movies when he was a kid, a renewed relationship that not only delighted the audience but absolutely fit the mood and tone of the show. Such symbiosis is rare in the tough business of commercial theater but it’s in the room here and, the more I think about it, to be cherished. And, of course, any publicist would be salivating at all the possible future Dads or Mrs. Pattersons, maybe even visiting the show from Radcliffe’s own past.
I hope no one gets carried away and fails to take risks on the potential brilliance of ordinary folks. I lingered a little too long in the lobby and, as I subsequently hit 45th Street behind the stage door, I watched the “audience member” who had played the dad walk out of the stage door. My first thought was, at least have this plant leave through the house, for goodness sake, but the second was a certain disappointment at some blown authenticity. My third was forgiving; there were a lot of critics in the house on my night.
Still. Risk is risk.
Every other time I’ve seen this piece, it has been in a small theater, allowing you to feel part of a defined community. The translation to the much bigger Hudson is well handled, all things considered, with the exception of the sound reinforcement, which is tricky when lines are being spoken all over the theater. Nonetheless, it still needs fixing. Too many of the brilliant things are sadly inaudible, especially if not spoken from the stage. That should not be that hard to do.
“Every Brilliant Thing” actually can be set everywhere; one recent other production I saw even staged the show in a suburban backyard, lawn and all. Vicki Mortimer’s Broadway design, which includes audience members seated on the stage, has a more abstract, “Our Town”-style vision with few sops to any perceived need for Broadway spectacle.
Clearly, everyone here understood all that what was really needed was Radcliffe and what he means to people.
At the Hudson Theatre, 141 W 44th St, New York; everybrilliantthing.com
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
