Brilliant, Mostly. Daniel Radcliffe in Every Brilliant Thing

For twenty or so minutes before the show starts, Daniel Radcliffe is already working. He's in the aisles, handing out index cards, chatting people up, hurrying from the orchestra to the mezzanine to the balcony and back — just a performer in a theatre who happens to be one of the most famous people alive. By the time he gets on stage, the room is already warm, buzzing with adrenaline. That pre-show is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, actually, because what follows is simpler and sweeter than you expect.

Every Brilliant Thing was written by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe, born out of Macmillan's 2006 short story, and it's been performed in over 80 countries before finally landing on Broadway. The premise is simple: a man begins compiling a list of every brilliant thing in the world to help his mother through her depression. He starts at age seven. The list keeps growing.

A note before you buy tickets: sit on the stage if you can. The show pulls audience members in — you get a cue card, you get called on, you become part of the list. Radcliffe is a natural at this, loose and funny and genuinely responsive to whoever he's talking to. Every performance is different, and takes theatre’s temporality to new heights.

Photo by Matthew Murphy

But here's my honest reaction: I wanted more. The show is warm and it's funny and Radcliffe is completely charming — and that's the thing that nagged at me walking out. Depression and suicide are the bones of this story. There were moments where the piece suddenly had real weight to it and I leaned forward, but then it would pivot back toward lightness. I understand why — that tension between darkness and joy is the whole argument the play is making. But I kept waiting for it to really crack open, and it never quite did.

For a play that deals so directly with chronic depression, Every Brilliant Thing leans hard into charm and lightness. There's nothing wrong with that as a philosophical stance — the whole piece is arguing that joy and grief live side by side. But I left the Hudson wanting the darkness to land harder. The laughs are real, the heart is there, but the gut-punch I was bracing for never fully arrived. The subject matter earns more weight than this script seems willing to carry.

It's worth seeing. Radcliffe is worth seeing. And if his run isn't your timing, Mariska Hargitay takes over May 26th, and Tracee Ellis Ross comes in July 7th through August 9th.