Every Brilliant Thing (Soho Place, London)
Verdict: Counting your blessings
If ever a show was made for a theatre in-the-round, it’s Duncan Macmillan’s response to his mother’s depression. Less a play than stand-up, or a communal feel-good therapy session, we really are all in this together. Audience participation is inescapable.
On strides Lenny Henry, national treasure, theatrical knight, a performer super-quick on his feet in every sense and with that rare gift of holding the audience in the palm of his hand and keeping it there.
Which is what happens over the next 70 minutes as he shouts out a number, and the random person in the crowd issued with that number shouts out the ‘brilliant thing’ associated with it. ‘Ice-cream’, ‘water-fights’ and so on (though mercifully no raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens). All are items on a list begun by an unnamed seven-year-old, as a way of counting his blessings following his mother’s first suicide attempt. A list he then gave to her.
Occasionally he asks someone sitting in the front row to play his dad, his girlfriend or, best of all, Graham, the chatty sock-puppet — the creation of intuitive Mrs Patterson, the school librarian.
Charm offensive: National treasure Lenny Henry works the crowd in Every Brilliant Thing, ensuring that the audience participation segments of the show are a treat, not a trial
Not surprisingly, some of these eager stooges are more expressive and audible than others. But it’s their readiness, listening out for their cue and swift response that counts.
As the lad grows older, falls in love, the list keeps growing, beyond the childishly predictable to the more adult and original: ‘Christopher Walken’, ‘Christopher Walken’s hair’, ‘Prince doing the splits’, ‘sex’ and lots of music which never fails to get Henry dancing.
On song: Music is one of the many reasons to be cheerful listed in Every Brilliant Thing, now starring Lenny Henry, alternating with co-writer Jonny Donohoe, at Soho Place
While merely paddling in the shallows of clinical depression, the piece comes filled with wholesome messages: accentuate the positive, talk (even to a sock-puppet), but don’t expect miracles. And laugh at yourself, if you possibly can: this lad’s girlfriend named his pet black Labrador ‘Metaphor’.
Whether future guest-hosts — Jonny Donohoe, Ambika Mod, Sue Perkins and Minnie Driver — have Henry’s ready, easy engagement, who knows?
Every Brilliant Thing runs at Soho Place theatre in London until November 8. Visit the website for details of guest hosts.
