Kate Mulvaney as the Narrator. Photo: Brett Boardman
This is such a raw and honest story, and so powerfully told by Kate Mulvaney as the Narrator, that it would be easy to forget that it is not Mulvaney’s own story. In fact, it is by Duncan McMillan who co-wrote it with Johnny Donahoe, the first person to perform it in 2013. It’s a play about depression, and mental health, and it’s told with the lights on, and is neither dispiriting nor maudlin but, instead, strangely uplifting in its message of hope and perseverance. Even more strangely, it is often very funny.
It’s not really a one-person show, because the Narrator involves the audience, which is integral to the message really (and often the humour), because one way or another every member of every audience has had some experience with mental health issues, either first-hand or through a loved one or friend.
It is not a true story, but it is authentic. Every Brilliant Thing starts with the Narrator as a seven-year-old attempting to ease her mother’s depression by creating for her a list of all the best things in the world: everything worth living for, whether that be ice-cream (No 1 on the seven-year-old’s list) or water fights or the colour yellow. When her mother comes back from hospital, she puts the list on her pillow. It’s returned, but she knows her mum has read it because the spelling has been corrected.
Every Brilliant Thing at Belvoir. Photo: Brett Boardman
Over the years, the list grows. The mother’s depression recurs. The father doesn’t like to discuss it; he takes refuges in music or silence. When the mother is once again hospitalised, the 17-year-old narrator thinks she doesn’t cope as well as her seven-year-old self – but the world doesn’t know that because living with this sort of fear is a silent struggle, often completely unacknowledged by the outside world and suppressed by those directly involved.
“We are all subconsciously affected by the behaviour of our peers”, one of many resonant and memorable lines from Every Brilliant Thing. Why wouldn’t the Narrator worry that she too will feel suicidal?
Another line: “If you get to the end of a long life without being crushingly depressed, then you probably haven’t been paying attention.”
The Narrator goes to uni, falls in love, keeps making her list. Her mother kills herself. The Narrator keeps making her list, gets married, falls apart, picks up the pieces, examines the pieces, perseveres and carries on. It’s not simple; it’s life. And life, as the Narrator points out, gets better – if you don’t give up on it.
This play has been performed countless times over four continents but, having seen Mulvaney perform it, I cannot imagine it done better by anyone else. To borrow from the title, she is brilliant! Whether as a seven-year-old talking to a psychologist’s sock puppet, or a teenager in love, or an adult in anguish, Mulvaney’s performance is spot on – warm, humorous, sad, angry and completely believable. And so alert: involving audience members to represent the dad, the counsellor, the love interest, the professor and others, means different personalities every night, different improvs and different shifts of mood – but nothing seems to faze Mulvaney.
Kate Champion and Steve Rodgers are co-directors (Rodgers taking over for the Parramatta run in April) and Steve Francis’s sound design is integral to the many moods of the work. It runs for approximately an hour and ten minutes (depending on those improvs) and it is wonderfully life affirming, reminding us all how easy it can be to take delight in the everyday. And in each other.
By the end of the evening, the list of brilliant things reaches one million. Here’s another one: “Standing ovations”. On opening night, Mulvaney’s was so well deserved and everyone was on their feet. I bet every audience will feel the same.
Every Brilliant Thing plays at the Belvoir Street Theatre, Surry Hills, until March 31 (then at Riverside Studios, Parramatta, from 3-6 April).
