This Sunday we experienced Daniel Radcliffe’s final performance in Every Brilliant Thing. This play is a singular Broadway experience, as the audience is enlisted to engage with the only regular cast member to bring the performance to life. As such it was particularly fun and exciting; and also surprisingly moving.

The play has been performed all over the world, including in NYC, with many actors, famous and not, playing the lead for over a decade. But this is its first run on Broadway. Mariska Hargitay will take over the part Daniel Radcliffe for which has just received his second Tony nomination.

The brilliant things of “Every Brilliant Thing” are a list a young child makes to cheer up their (presumably bipolar) mother after her first suicide attempt. Number 1 on a list started by a seven year old is “ice cream”. Over the years more and more items are added to the list. Some of these can be seen posted on the Hudson Theatre’s doors.

Broadway theater goers line up early to get into the theaters nowadays. But for “Every Brilliant Thing” ticket holders thronged even earlier than for the rest of Times Square’s offerings. Word has gotten around that the 30 minutes before the play starts are unlike what happens in any other theater.

A company of one, officially. But in reality the whole audience becomes part of the “company”, in ways big and small.

And Daniel Radcliffe is also crucially aided by assistant directors, especially in the choosing of those audience members that will take on the ways that are big.

Handwritten scraps of paper with examples of the brilliant things hang above theater goers in the lobby.

So what exactly is the audience enlisted to do? Several dozen are given a particular brilliant thing to shout out when Radcliffe calls out its number. Directional microphones in the house amplify those voices when that brilliant thing is proclaimed. One thing (#10 000) is called out by the whole audience. I won’t spoil what it is, only to say it is something the character definitely wrote as an adult.

Around 10 (give or take) audience members are chosen (with their consent) to actually play the part of important people in the character’s life. Not the troubled mother – we hear about her, but never see her portrayed. But everyone from a school librarian to the character’s father – in short cameo scenes or numerous crucial moments across the whole play.

Here is a shot of Daniel Radcliffe during those particular 30 minutes before the show starts, conferring with an assistant director as they scope out the incomig crowd to choose their co-stars for today’s performance.

Radcliffe would confer on stage, and then go into the audience to hand out “brilliant things” for audience members to shout when their number was called; and to enlist audience members to become his scene partners. They would not be given a script, just the merest of preparatory instructions (as far as I could tell), and then be guided through their scenes in the moment by a cleverly written play and Radcliffe’s gentle coaxing. Improvisation would necessarily ensue, but Radcliffe was so deft about it I could not always be sure what was scripted and what was unique to this performance.

At one point the character Radcliffe plays quotes Frank Sinatra’s song My Way: “And so I face the final curtain”. Daniel added “A little bit on the nose today”. Obviously that was an off the cuff reference to his final performance in the play that day.

I took those photos from the second to last row in the balcony section. Clearly the woman in front of me has a better zoom on her phone camera than I do.

I got our tickets back in November when they first went on sale, surmising correctly that this would be a hot ticket not likely to show up in any of the discount sites I generally use to afford Broadway tickets. But paying full price meant going for the upper balcony (one level above mezzanine, two levels above orchestra). When I first sat down I regretted not paying a lot more for a better seat. However once they performance began it didn’t matter where one sat, the whole audience was completely drawn in.

Daniel Radcliffe made his way to every level of the theater as he enlisted his collaborators, even all the way up in the balcony.

Company huddles right before the start of a performance are a theater tradition. Here we all could see Radcliffe huddle with the assistant directors on stage in the moments before it all began.

At which point it was time for us all to put away our electronic devices…

It is a special play / performance piece worth experiencing in any iteration you have the chance to (one woman in Bangladesh performs it to small crowds in living rooms across the country). But there is something particularly – pardon the pun – “magical” about experiencing this with Daniel Radcliffe, as the New York Times review for this production explains:

“Radcliffe’s fully a theater creature now; he won a Tony Award in 2024 for his performance in “Merrily We Roll Along.” And yet we loved him first on film as Harry Potter, or “the boy who lived.” In “Every Brilliant Thing,” the narrator grows up over the course of the show; Radcliffe grew up in front of everyone. As wonderful as other actors might be in the part, it’s key that we knew this one as a little kid, plucky in the face of fear.”

I will link to the article here as a gift share. It’s well worth a read to understand the full experience as well as the history of this play.

It was fun and exciting and novel, as expected. It was also tremendously moving. Both Ed and I had tears streaming down our faces.

On our way out, let’s catch some more glimpses of some of the many brilliant things.