Tyler Nye is a force in the Depot Theatre’s one-person production, EVERY BRILLIANT THING.
Adults with stacks of academic degrees from prestigious institutions have trouble understanding suicidal tendencies, so what chance would a child have? You might be surprised.
That’s the starting point of the one-person play, Every Brilliant Thing, which opened this weekend at The Depot Theatre. In it, an unnamed man, played by Tyler Nye, recalled his time as a youngster confronted with his mother’s attempted suicide, when he reacted as a youngster might: by trying to cheer up mom, in this case with a list of things that bring him joy. No. 1 on his list is ice cream.
Nye brilliantly expresses two emotions at once, as a patina of mirth tries to tamp down the great fear and uncertainty we sense roiling just beneath the surface. His co-star is the list itself, which grows by hundreds, then thousands upon thousands of entries of little things in life that are joyful.
Many entries on the list are called out by audience members, who also make brief stand-in performances as important people in the man’s life. The house lights remain on throughout the show, further integrating the audience into the performance. It is Nye himself who scoots among audience members pre-play to arrange their roles, which further breaks down the wall of separation between actor and audience.
As the walls of depression close around his mother, so does the demand for levity, as a self-defense mechanism if nothing else.
His list of brilliant things continues to grow and become part of him, a tool for communication, entertainment, and perhaps self preservation. As it expands into the hundreds of thousands, the list takes on an organic life of its own, and we wonder if the man is keeping the lengthy document alive or if it’s the other way around.
As we have come to know, illnesses physical and mental are often hereditary, and many a child has looked at an afflicted parent and wondered if that’s what’s in store for them. And maybe what has clearly become this man’s obsession is a clue.
Yet keeping these small, everyday nuggets of happiness at the fore is, in this case, an effective foil. There is beauty all around us if that’s what we choose to focus upon.
Every Brilliant Thing, directed by Chan Harris, is deliberately and effectively minimalist, leaving nothing but a couple of folding metal chairs to distract from the onstage emotion. In his notes, Harris says care is taken in the play to treat mental illness with the gravity it deserves, and in this it succeeds.
Critics might note that mental health is not that simple, that the hackneyed “but you have so much to live for” entreaties fail to understand that a positive outlook is no antidote for clinical depression.
But Every Brilliant Thing supposes as much; responding to a suicide attempt with visions of ice cream is indeed a child’s attempt to make sense of something that has no easy explanation. As the man’s list of things that make life worth living grows toward its one-millionth entry we know that the list isn’t for his mother, it’s for him — and for all of us who have been blessed with the good fortune of being able to choose whether we are happy or not. It is the perfect message for today’s world.
Tim Rowland contributed this review by the request of, and in collaboration with the Depot Theatre. Rowland is a journalist and New York Times bestselling author, whose humorous commentaries explore an eclectic variety of subject matter, from politics to history to the great outdoors. He and his wife Beth live on the Ausable River in Jay, N.Y.
