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Thought provoking, serious, yet fun
Every Brilliant Thing is a one man show about depression and suicide. It is told through the voice of a child growing up through to adulthood finding a mechanism to cope with his mothers repeated attempts to take her life.
He decides to write things that he appreciates in life. As a youngster, they start with ice cream, water fights and wearing a cape. As he matures they naturally become more serious like preparing to declare your love or watching someone you know watch a movie you love.
He shares his list with his mother yet it does not deter her in her determination to end her life.
It's a sobering topic and one that many people can relate to. Yet, this is told in such a way as to be uplifting and to give you hope.
There is a lot of audience participation where we are given a number and an appreciation so when the number is called out we read from the card. This engages the audience quite brilliantly, giving us all an appreciation of what we may put on our list.
There are a number of audience members asked to play various roles such as his dad, his vet and his love interest. This is fraught with danger, but tonight all of the people picked played their roles well, deftly handled by our actor.
There are two people playing the main role on alternate nights and tonight I saw Nick Purdie in the role. It would be interesting to see Trubie Dylan-Smith as well as no doubt he would bring his own perspective to the role. Nick handled the role with ease and appeared very comfortable, even when dealing with members of the audience who were asked to do certain things and it didn't go as planned.
This show was played in the round and while the set was sparse and simple, the movement and direction of the actor was slick and precise.
While the subject matter was difficult, we all left the auditorium with hope and a smile on our faces. Theatre is the perfect vehicle to deal with such topics.
Highly recommended
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