Who is Every Brilliant Thing about?

Most would say Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s play is about the main character’s relationship with his mom’s suicide attempts…but Every Brilliant Thing slyly indicates that his father is equally central to the primary focus.

This one(-ish)-person show, now on Broadway, is structured around the narrator’s (Daniel Radcliffe) list of every brilliant thing that might convince his mom that life is worth continuing to live. Macmillan and Jeremy Herrin’s production ends with his millionth — and final — entry, culminating in…an ode to vinyls, which have already been associated with his dad, because his epitomizing activity for decades has been impromptu listening sessions.

An activity that would sometimes widen the emotional and physical chasm between father and son that words could never bridge. But LPs also ultimately provided a sort of inherited language to help leapfrog their divide.

When Radcliffe’s character left home for college, his pa’s farewell gift was handing over a collection of his cherished records — a wordless gesture of true love, and communion, and connection, and communication, the sort that the dad’s verbal shortcomings could never achieve. 

Yes, years later, the protagonist’s depression pushed him to similarly silo away alone inside, an existential remove that manifested itself in him choosing to pour over vinyl liner-notes instead of interacting with his loved ones IRL — a like-father-like-son inaccessibility that doubles as the darker side to his 1,000,000th Brilliant Thing.

But such sadness is often a part of life’s brilliance, tinged to the means of our salvation. Because for both sire and offspring, vinyls offer some type of path forward, albeit not one without its downsides (good luck finding a path of pure upside).

But a road forward is more than the mother could ever find.

And, the last image of Every Brilliant Thing finds the protagonist contentedly crate-digging through his paternal inheritance once more, still listening, still interested in rifling through the artifacts of life, at least for another day.