Sue Perkins makes Every Brilliant Thing quietly unforgettable

Every Brilliant Thing – with Sue Perkins | @ Soho Place until 8th November

This show is a list that you will want to keep adding to.

I’ve been lucky enough to revisit Every Brilliant Thing. Last time I saw Lenny Henry; this time Sue Perkins. Same show, same list, but the whole play shifts with who’s at the centre. That’s the joy of it – you could go five times in this run and get five completely different nights – not just with the different actors but also with the audience members. It highlights for me that theatre is truly alive and no performance is ever the same.

Duncan Macmillan’s script (co-directed with Jeremy Herrin) tells the story of a child who starts a list of life’s brilliant things when his mum is taken to hospital after a suicide attempt. The list grows, the child grows, and the story never shies away from the heavy themes – but it wraps them in laughter, warmth and a huge amount of audience participation – which still terrifies me!

It begins with something as simple as ice cream – number one on the list – and builds. Audience members are enlisted as everything from a vet who has to put down a pet, to a sock-puppet-wielding schoolteacher to the girlfriend and ultimate fiancé. Selected members of the audience are also given numbered cards which they must shout out when that number is called out.

Seeing Sue Perkins do it was fascinating. She was gentler than Lenny Henry – softer in how she pulled the audience in. But she wasn’t any less funny. The result was that I laughed just as much, but I found myself far more moved. She’s got a knack for making it feel personal, and one of the changes for her was that she got us all up and dancing into a rave instead of a singalong. Another brilliant touch was that every seat had card 101: “waking up next to somebody you love.” We all shouted it together and, just for a moment, the whole theatre was engaged! This is what, in part, makes it so uplifting.

It was fascinating to see how all those different things played out and how it had been adapted for her. And when she chose the person that she was in love with, making that a same-sex couple, also added to it and worked brilliantly.

The show itself has become a bit of a phenomenon. It started small, playing the Edinburgh Fringe and Off-Broadway before spreading to more than 80 countries and even making it onto HBO. The pedigree behind it shows – Macmillan and Herrin guiding it, Vicki Mortimer’s design keeping it simple and homely, Jack Knowles’s lighting and Tom Gibbons’s sound giving it just the right lift when it needs it. This West End run has the starry rotating cast – Perkins, Henry, Minnie Driver, Jonny Donohoe, Ambika Mod – each of them reshaping it in their own style.

It’s funny, it’s moving, and it’s one of those rare plays where you leave not only laughing but thinking about the little things that keep us going. For me, Sue Perkins made it gentler, warmer, and in the end even more affecting.

It was great, different and I want to go back, see it again, hopefully with Minnie Driver next time!

Verdict: Life-affirming play that blends sock puppets, suicide and ice cream into something that is both hilarious and deeply moving.

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