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Chapter 1: What is the main theme of 'Every Brilliant Thing'?
Hey, it's Ben Fruman, editor-in-chief of Wirecutter.
We put together the ultimate moving guide, and I wanted to find out a few of our writers' favorite tips.
When you're first moving into your home, make sure that you change the batteries in your smoke detector.
Buy a mattress bag. You can carry a mattress more easily because the handles are built in, and it's going to protect your mattress from the truck and the street.
Make sure you have towels on hand. You don't want to end up taking a shower and using a dirty sock to dry off. Yeah.
If you're getting ready to move, let Wirecutter help you make a plan at nytimes.com slash moving. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily on Sunday. The general heaviness of this moment, the war, the prices, the AI, is not lost on any of us. We cover it every day on this show. Joy and relief, I think it's fair to say, are rare today.
But a few weeks ago, I found myself genuinely awash in both of those feelings. I had just left a theater in midtown Manhattan, where I had seen something unlike anything I'd ever seen before. A show that insists on creating a new kind of filter. A happier filter. A filter through which ordinary, everyday occurrences... literally become a reason to live.
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Chapter 2: How does Daniel Radcliffe describe his character's journey?
The list began after her first attempt. A list of everything brilliant about the world.
The show is called Every Brilliant Thing. It just opened up on Broadway, starring Daniel Radcliffe. In it, Radcliffe asks us, the audience, to work together with him to tell the play's central story.
One. Ice cream.
Two.
Water fights. Three.
More on that in just a moment. It turns out I was relatively late to the phenomenon of this show, which has become a kind of global antidote to pain. It's been translated into dozens of languages. It's been produced in hundreds of communities around the world, in places like Dublin. The list began after her first attempt. Tokyo. No walking. The list began after her first attempt. Even on HBO.
The list began after her first attempt.
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Chapter 3: What role does audience participation play in the show?
A list of everything that was brilliant about the world, everything that was worth living for. And so today, we're going to tell the story of this show, why it has resonated with so many people, and what it tells us about how to live in dark times. It's Sunday, April 26th. Daniel Radcliffe, welcome to The Daily. Thank you so much for having me. We're thrilled to have you. Thank you.
So, Every Brilliant Thing, as you know, is a very complicated show to explain to somebody who has never seen it before. So, when somebody asks you, Daniel Radcliffe, to describe the show, what do you say?
Well, the plot of the show is I play a character who, when they were young, their mother was dealing with very, very serious depression and mental health issues. And so in an effort to sort of cheer his mom up, he starts making a list of every brilliant thing that he can think of about the world.
And brilliant in the context of the show and in British parlance is essentially everything that's good and wonderful.
Yeah, everything that's, you know, wonderful, great, amazing, joyous about the world.
Yeah. And just to give some examples.
Kazoos, period. Yeah. Kazoos actually... Really good oranges. Yeah, really good oranges. Peeing in the ocean and nobody knows.
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Chapter 4: How does the play address mental health and depression?
The awkward dance of negotiating whether it's going to be a hug or a handshake. Yeah. So then it's sort of about how the making of that list follows him into his teenage years and then becomes a kind of coping mechanism for him as an adult and a kind of really an extension of just how he sees the world in this sort of ever-evolving list-making process.
Yeah.
My mind was fizzing. Ever since I was little, I'd wanted to understand why my mum had done what she had done. And here was a possible answer, or at least, you know, part of one. I am so sorry, Professor. Please carry on. But Charlotte is... I left the lecture. You're done. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
But the way the play is done, it's this kind of amazing communal experience. Like it should feel every night like me and the audience are kind of making the play together.
Right. So let's talk about that communal experience, because audience participation is a huge part of this show. It's improvised, but also kind of not entirely improvised. Before the show even begins, you are out there in the audience, you're walking around, you're talking with people, you're assigning them roles. You're looking for audience members to be in this play with you.
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Chapter 5: What personal connections do the actors have with the material?
So talk to me about that.
Yeah, so... There are sort of two levels to the audience participation in this show. There's one sort of quite a light lift for people where I give people a card that has a number on it and some words. And when I shout out the number, they shout out those words. Five.
Roller coasters.
Six.
Super Mario.
Seven.
People falling over.
And then there is five people who play very significant roles in the show. The heavy lifts. The heavy lifts. And they are people that do not know that they will be doing that when they come into the theater that night. And I have to try and suss out who I would like to use and then if they would like to be used.
Generally speaking, people are sort of fairly amenable to it, but we do get some absolute hard no's from people sometimes.
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Chapter 6: How has 'Every Brilliant Thing' resonated across different cultures?
In my mind, you've got your pick of the letter. You can do anything you want. So what made you take on such an unusual play?
Well, you know, I read the script, and from the moment that it said, you know, the actor starts the show in the audience, greeting people as they come in and assigning roles, I was immediately like, wait, what is this? There's nothing else that I've ever read that requires me to have this sort of relationship with an audience that I do.
You know, if anyone comes in with any preconceived notions of me or being sort of starstruck or whatever, I feel like that first half hour kind of breaks that down. It shatters it. You see me running around sweating. You know, it takes any sort of illusion or romance out of me, I think, in a really nice way.
One of the parameters for me of the whole show was just how much moisture was on your sweater.
Yeah. Yeah, no. My dresser, Sandy, said to me the other day, she was like, do you want an undershirt? And I was like, no, then I'll sweat more. I don't mind people seeing me sweat. It's very evident that I'm running around. People know why it's happening.
It strikes me that the kind of interactions you have to go have in the audience every night, they may not be the thing that most famous actors would relish.
I have to say, I think there's something incredibly liberating for me being able to do this. I don't get to be in a room in the way I am in the room for the half hour before the show ever.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Mariska Hargitay share about her upcoming role?
I don't get to walk into a huge crowded room of people with my hat off and no glasses and not trying to, you know, not trying to hide, which is normally my MO when I go through the rest of my life. And actually being able to go into a room, just go up to people and say, hi, I'm Dan. So nice to meet you. Thank you for coming. Here's what the show is about, is amazing.
It's just something I don't get to do. There's a line actually in the show, which I have one of the many lines that I relate to where I say, I was not shy. I've been trying to stay constant level. And there is something about, I think people think of me as being quite shy, but actually like I'm really not. I love talking to people.
It's just that talking to people and being not shy, you know, could have a different knock on effect in the rest of my life. Whereas actually this is an environment which is like, I can be both myself and quite voluble and just running around, but also there's a certain amount of like, yeah, I don't know. It's hard.
No, I think I hear you saying that you're getting as much out of these interactions as we are. Oh, 100%.
Yeah, absolutely. And because sometimes people will amaze you. Just they genuinely say something that is so moving and so real and so unexpected that it moves me to the exact place where the character needs to be without me trying to have to work to get there.
And now that you've been doing the show for a couple of months, do you have a single favorite interaction with an audience member so far?
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Chapter 8: How does the show foster community and connection among audiences?
Yeah, I think, you know, we had, there's one of the characters in the show who is generally played by an older woman and... Mrs. Patterson. Yes.
That's the role that I think everybody who sees the play... probably fixes on to a degree. And just to explain without giving away too, too much, Mrs. Patterson is a school counselor, gives you in your darker, younger days some really important advice, and it requires you to go into the audience and ask someone to take off their shoe, remove their sock, and use it as a sock puppet.
And they have to make some real editorial decisions.
Yeah. I mean, the first scene with Mrs. Patterson is... quite structured and follows, you know, I generally... We hit pretty much all the same beats in it every night. The last scene is truly... One of the joys of the show is that a lot of different things can happen. So there is a final scene with Mrs. Patterson where...
Having grown up, I then call on her again to like essentially comfort me in a moment of real despair. And then we had a woman the other day and she was incredible. And I... You know, when I said to her, I asked Mrs. Patson, do you remember what I was like when I was a kid? And she said, you were happy sometimes, but you were sad sometimes. And when you were sad, you used to work on your list.
And then she said, and when I'm sad, I still work on my list. And I just like started crying. It was so beautiful and so generous of her to reach into her actual experience and talk to me that sort of honestly. And the joy of doing this show is that you are exposed on a daily basis to people's brilliance and their kindness.
And actually, that's what I say to people a lot when I'm asking people to join in the show. I say... You don't have to be funny. You don't have to be clever. If you are those things, that's a great bonus. The only thing you have to be to make the show work is kind. And if you're kind, the show flies.
That's beautiful.
It's a beautiful thing to be on the receiving end of.
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