Review: Every Brilliant Thing
- The Verdict
- Jun 3
- 3 min read
🌟VERDICT’S PICK🌟
Few plays are capable of keeping an audience laughing while simultaneously confronting the realities of mental illness. Duncan Macmillan’s masterpiece, Every Brilliant Thing, has finally made its long-awaited Broadway debut after countless productions across the globe in numerous languages. Opening in March at the Hudson Theatre, I finally caught this sizzling-hot ticket during the second week of Mariska Hargitay’s run.
The “Law & Order: SVU” star is making her Broadway debut in this play, yet she looks perfectly at home on a Broadway stage. Before the play begins, she and two members of the stage management team dash around all three levels of the auditorium, handing out cards to audience members eager to participate in the evening’s performance. While technically a one-person play, audience interaction is vital to its success. Once the show begins, audience participation is immediate. As Hargitay begins to list her “brilliant things,” she calls out the number “one!,” to which the audience member holding the corresponding card calls back, “ice cream!”
As the show continues and the Narrator grows, the list matures as well. Brilliant things evolve from childhood delights such as “water fights” (#2) to adult joys like “waking up late next to someone you LOVE!” (#10,000, which the entire audience is invited to say). Tom Gibbons’ sound design allows all participants to be heard, no matter where they are seated. The entire theatre has been wired with microphones, which are activated whenever the seated audience is participating. The effect transforms the audience from passive observers into active collaborators, reinforcing the communal spirit at the heart of the piece.
In addition to the audience in the house who call out the brilliant things, there are five additional participants who join Hargitay onstage. These include Sam, the Narrator’s boyfriend and eventual husband, and Mrs. Patterson, the kind school counselor who helps the Narrator as both a young child and an adult. The Narrator’s dad has a role as well. These roles contain very little dialogue, but whenever they are called upon to speak, the responses are entirely improvised. At my performance, all of the participants completely understood the assignment, especially Mrs. Patterson, who, in the play’s final moments, delivered a beautiful reflection on the Narrator’s life in response to the question, “Was I happy?”
As Hargitay guides the audience through the Narrator’s darkest periods, she continually returns to the list itself. By the end, it becomes clear that the exercise may have helped the Narrator even more than the mother for whom it was originally created. It also found its way into my heart and, judging by the reactions around me, into countless others as well. Hargitay’s genuine warmth and obvious affection for this play radiate throughout the theatre, and through her interactions with the onstage participants. Of course, audience participation is never a guaranteed success, especially when audience members are asked to improvise on the spot. If anyone stumbles during an improvised exchange, she gently redirects them with a laugh and a prompt that guides them toward the intended response. The high-five tour she runs around the entire orchestra is wonderful too—real moments of connection, which is what this play thrives on. Rather than treating this production as a celebrity cameo, Hargitay embraces the vulnerability and intimacy the material demands. Many enter the theatre fans of the TV star, but we all leave feeling more connected than star-struck.
Every Brilliant Thing is, on the surface, a story about a family grappling with mental illness, but its enduring appeal lies in its insistence that joy and grief can occupy the same space. Under Hargitay’s guidance, that message never feels imposed upon the audience. Instead, it emerges naturally through a celebration of the small pleasures we so often overlook. In a Broadway season dominated by spectacle, Every Brilliant Thing is a powerful reminder that theatre’s greatest special effect remains human connection. Armed with little more than a stack of index cards and an audience eager to shout “Kazoos!” (#701, my card!), Mariska Hargitay transforms one of the season’s smallest productions into …one of its most memorable achievements, a production that lingers long after the final brilliant thing has been spoken because it quietly changes the way you look at the world around you.
5/5 stars
1 hour and 20 minutes, no intermission
Hudson Theatre
Through August 9, 2026
(Starring Mariska Hargitay through July 5, Tracee Ellis Ross through August 9)
