Photos by Danielle Fauteux Jacques
Every Brilliant Thing’. Written by Duncan Macmillan with Johnny Donahoe. Directed by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Scenic and Sound Design by Joseph Lark-Riley. Lighting Design by Danielle Fauteux Jacques. Produced by Apollinaire Theatre Company at Chelsea Theatre Works, 189 Winnisimmet St, Chelsea, MA through January 19th.
By Shelley A. Sackett
A one-person show about suicide and depression that threatens random audience participation, runs for approximately 75 intermission-less minutes, and pledges to be funny and uplifting has a pretty high bar to clear. Yet, Apollinaire Theatre Company does just that with room to spare in its brilliant production of Every Brilliant Thing.
The play’s narrator, the irrepressible Parker Jennings (alternating the role with Cristhian Mancinas-Garcia, who also performs it in Spanish), is already standing in the middle of the stage when even the earliest audience member arrives. As if welcoming them into her own living room, she greets them warmly with an unaffected smile and a blue basket full of cards.
“I have a job for you all this evening,” she exclaims as she hands out the numbered cards with instructions to shout out what is written whenever she says that number.
Set in the round in an intimate black-box space that is furnished with comfortable salon-like seating, Jennings’ rapport with the audience is immediate and palpable. Upbeat jazz and full house lights heighten the sense of communal conversation. Before she has uttered her first line, she has us in the palm of her hand, making us feel like we’re here by design rather than happenstance.
“The list began after her first attempt,” she begins. “A list of everything brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for.”
The first call and response quickly follows. “Number One,” she says, and the person holding that card shouts out, “Ice cream.” Number two is water fights. Three is staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV. Any flicker of stage fright or self-consciousness has completely evaporated. We are in this together.
In an instant, Jennings the Narrator has morphed into the seven-year-old girl who, after learning that her mother attempted suicide, vows to make her mother feel better by making a list of everything that makes life worth living and sharing it with her. This coping exercise will see her through the next several decades and, by the end of the play, will number one million.
Her first encounter with death (“a loved one becoming an object”) and the first audience-supporting role (as the vet) occurs when she has to put down her beloved dog. Jennings’ improvisational chops and talent for putting the audience at ease are on full display. Other interactive roles will include her father, teacher, school counselor, and first love/wife.
Her second encounter with the idea of death occurs when her father picks her up from school after her mother’s first suicide attempt. He explains to the little girl that her mother is in the hospital because she is sad, because she couldn’t think of anything worth living for.
The precocious child intuits the concept of glimmers, the opposites of triggers. These are small experiences of pleasure that happen during simple, everyday activities. Noticing and appreciating them can cue your nervous system that you’re safe and can relax.
She devotes her life to crafting a list of every brilliant thing she can think of, first in an attempt to save her mother and later for herself, as she navigates her own journey of hills and valleys and, poignantly, fear that her mother’s mental illness tributary runs through her veins as well. As time moves on, the list becomes a sort of diary that reflects the texture of her everyday experiences.
“Things may not always get brilliant, but they get better,” she says. “We need to imagine a future better than the past because that’s what hope is and without hope, life isn’t worth living.”
Thanks to Joseph Lark-Riley’s carefully curated sound design, the significance of blues and jazz also runs deeply. These songs and artists link the Narrator to her vinyl-loving dad and tether her. Lyrics from “Drown In My Own Tears,” “I Love You Just the Way You Are” and “At Last” are more than toe-tapping background; they are placeholders and place setters that connect us to our narrator and her story. It’s no surprise that one of the items on her list is: “A song transporting you back to a moment in time.”
The tone and substance of Duncan Macmillan’s script (written with Johnny Donahoe, a British stand-up comedian who first played the role at the Ludlow Fringe Festival in 2013) covers a lot of ground. The Narrator’s ability to confront issues as heartwrenching as the guilt felt by children of suicides, social contagions, and the virulence of hard-wired, chronic depression with playfulness, insight, and unflinching honesty prevents the play from becoming mawkish, which easily could have happened if penned by a less skillful and empathetic playwright.
Danielle Fauteux Jacques wisely directs with a light touch, and Jennings shoulders the production with chipper verve and a storyteller’s charm. Yet, she also brings an emotional intelligence to her performance, the shadow of a veil that, when lifted, reveals the scars of underlying trauma. Most recently seen as Sarah in Apollinaire’s equally extraordinary “Touching the Void” last May, Jennings is an actress I would (and did) go out of my way to catch in any role she should take on. Her energy, authenticity and confidence are matched only by her raw talent.
As the play winds down, the Narrator’s list takes on a life of its own as an ersatz crowdsourced lifeline, publicly shared and collaboratively complied. Although the list couldn’t save her mother, it may just have prevented her from following in her footsteps. She leaves us collectively more open-hearted and open-minded with the balm of these parting words of benediction: “If you live a long life and get to the end of it without ever once having felt crushingly depressed, then you probably haven’t been paying attention.”
For more information and to buy tickets, visit apollinairetheatre.com
