Daniel Radcliffe's Favorite Part of Every Brilliant Thing Is the Audience Participation

Viewers, especially fans of musical theatre and Harry Potter, will be interested to know that when you buy a ticket to Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway, you will be greeted by Daniel Radcliffe himself when you enter the theatre. In this one-person(ish) show, Radcliffe is in the house a half hour before showtime talking to the audience. Engaged and energized, the Tony winner makes his way around the Hudson Theatre house, going from the orchestra to the mezzanines and back—asking audience members if they’re up for shouting things at him during the show and passing out very important pieces of paper (more on that later). Don’t ask to take a photo with him though, Radcliffe is on a very important mission.

Speaking to him while he was in rehearsal, Radcliffe was only a little bit nervous, saying that talking to the audience was actually a selling point for him in doing the show. “I'm quite good at dispelling the idea of me being famous quite quickly when I’m actually talking to somebody. I'm hoping that I can make people feel kind of at ease pretty quickly with me. I'm really looking forward to that part of the show.” Which is hard to believe considering stars of Radcliffe’s caliber usually don’t interact with the public without multiple layers of security between them. But he’s not worried, saying: “I have a good instinct for picking out a crazy person at 100 yards.”

This meet-and-greet experience isn’t just a gimmick—it’s actually a crucial element of Every Brilliant Thing. The play, written by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe, was first performed in 2013 by Donahoe. It is about a man whose mother tried to commit suicide when he was seven years old. To cheer her up, he makes a list of all of the “brilliant things” that make life worth living, such as ice cream, rollercoasters, “staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV.” As he gets older, and has his own battle with depression, the narrator adds to his list until it numbers over a million items.

Oh, and as for the audience? They are asked throughout the show to shout out a brilliant thing (which they receive from Radcliffe on a piece of paper). They are also asked to play various characters in the narrator’s life, such as his father, his partner, a veterinarian. Someone is even asked to ad-lib a wedding toast.

“People are always amazed that it's not rigged or full of plants,” remarks Every Brilliant Thing co-director Jeremy Herrin. “It takes a really depressing subject and turns it into an absolute joyous celebration of what it's like to be human. And the way it does that is through the most ingenious theatrical mechanism. It's sort of alchemy; it just creates a whole world from seemingly nothing.”

Since its 2013 premiere, Every Brilliant Thing became a runaway hit, touring around the U.K., getting a lengthy run Off-Broadway, and now it’s been done all around the world in 66 countries in 44 languages; there have been over 600 productions in the U.S. alone. “This play was only ever supposed to be seen twice,” muses Macmillan, who first wrote the piece as a monologue before expanding it into a full-length piece with Donahoe (who performed it Off-Broadway and whose 2014 performance can be streamed on HBO Max).

This production marks the play’s Broadway debut, though that's just the cherry on top for Macmillan: “The thing I'm most proud of is how it's traveled. And how it's spoken to different communities of people who I could never write a play for: a rural Bangladesh community, it’s played in Nairobi, it’s played in Melbourne, it’s played in Timbuktu … It's funny and it's sad, and it tries to speak to a really common experience that everyone in the room will have some connection to.”

Macmillan is co-directing the show with Herrin, fresh off a run on the West End which saw the show being performed by a succession of well-known personalities, including Great British Bakeoff’s Sue Perkins and actor Minnie Driver. Looking for other actors who could be game, the duo sent the script to Radcliffe.

The actor had actually been ready to take a theatre hiatus. He had just done Merrily We Roll Along for over a year, winning a Tony in the process. He had a new NBC sitcom coming out that was keeping him busy, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. But he immediately said yes to Every Brilliant Thing with one stipulation: He didn’t want to relocate his family to London, so can the show be done in New York instead? Broadway fell quickly into place.

“Whenever you can find something that sits very naturally in your voice, I think that's something I'm always drawn to,” explains Radcliffe. “We are not the same person, but there is a lot of common ground [between me and the show’s narrator]—just the voice and the way the character talks about things when he's excited about them, I felt were very similar to me … The last show I did, Merrily, the thing I loved about it was that I didn't really have to act very much. I loved Jonathan [Groff] and Lindsay [Mendez] so much that it was very easy. I didn't have to force any of the emotions that I was feeling for them. Now I crave that kind of authenticity in everything that I want to do. This play, because you are casting [different] people every night for it, and the interaction with the audience—there is a sort of happily inescapable authenticity that's going to be there.”

It also helps that his son (with partner Erin Darke) is young enough now that Radcliffe can have family time during the day and do the show at night, saying, “I feel like now, before he starts real school, is probably the time to get these fun plays in.” Does that mean after Every Brilliant Thing, Radcliffe will take a real theatre break? He chuckles, responding, “Maybe, it depends how much my son wants to spend time with me.”

That authenticity is what has made Every Brilliant Thing endure over the past decade and in 66 countries. The performers are encouraged to make the text their own so that it feels like they are telling their own life story—whether it was the production in Cairo, Egypt, that was done in Arabic; the production in Ahmedabad, India, where the performer played a traditional folk song during the wedding scene; or on Broadway where Radcliffe has put in a Simpsons reference (he says the television show is “50 percent my personality”).

Macmillan declines to state whether the piece, told in the first person, is autobiographical, only saying, “Who hasn't had some personal experience with depression?” For Broadway, Every Brilliant Thing has partnered with mental health tech non-profit Project Healthy Minds, to connect audience members to the show with mental health support, should they need it.

Says Macmillan: “At the time of writing, I think it was quite fashionable to write plays which in some ways glamorized or saw suicide as a poetic inevitability. And that always frustrated me. That didn't feel like the reality of what it's like to live with depression, which is something that is much more common and much less, sort of remarkable in some ways. And there didn't seem to be a play for those people to say, ‘If you feel like this, you're not alone.’ Part of the gesture of the show was we all can see each other and hear each other and share in the creation of the show. We're all crying together, or all laughing together.”

Chimes in Radcliffe: “I'm actually incredibly cynical about the value of art to change big things. But we’re in a big enough house that every night, there will be somebody out there that needs to hear the message that this play has. It's an honor to be able to communicate that.”

Radcliffe is currently scheduled to perform in Every Brilliant Thing until May 24. Will there be other performers after him? Herrin isn’t discounting it, especially after the show’s West End run. But he didn’t disclose who was in talks to do it next, only saying he’s open to actors of any demographic leading the play: “Let's see how we go. Nobody is against the idea of a play like this playing longer, if it works. It's a force for good in the world.”

In the meantime, for any audience member who wants to be called on by Radcliffe during Every Brilliant Thing, Macmillan has a specific piece of advice: “The people who are too keen, we're going to steer clear … We're not asking people to get up and to be entertaining and to do their little moment on the Broadway stage. What we're looking for is people to put themselves in Daniel's hands and just be themselves. Just be authentic.”

And if you’re nervous about being called on (which can happen even if you sit in the mezzanine), don’t worry. Says Herrin: “You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do.” 

Chimes in Radcliffe: “I'm also going to be nervous. We'll get through it together.” A group of strangers becoming, for one evening, a community—what can be more brilliant than that?