#everybrilliantthing

Kelsey Maurine Brickl recently published this review of Every Brilliant Thing.

Every Brilliant Thing The Most Responsible Show on Broadway. Kelsey Maurine Brickl Apr 05, 2026

Content note: This article discusses suicide, mental illness, and intergenerational experiences of loss. Please take care while reading.

I saw Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway today. It was truly the best show I have seen in a very long time.

The Hudson Theatre’s vestibule set the scene with some foreshadowing, bedecking its Beaux-Arts ceiling with color-coordinated paper hangings, some of the “brilliant things” in question.

Before the show, Daniel Radcliffe began circulating the theatre. He did not stop moving until his final bow. He was getting volunteers to shout various lines, to play small roles, and like a quarterback on a football team, his emotional intelligence in reading the room was apparent. His choices worked well during the show; the audience member he selected to “marry” him as “Sam” was a guarded young man who seemed slightly skeptical at first, but by the end of his participatory scenes, had visibly warmed entirely to his “responsibilities.”

Dan chose well. His new “dad” told him so, too, in his improved speech, which was heartily cheered.

I was truly struck by the lighting and stripped-down stage, and the slightly disarming and almost disorienting, but skillfully immediate rapport that Daniel Radcliffe established as the lone actor in the show.

He managed rehearsed humor, improvised warm hilarity, and tonal pivots to genuine gut punches within a moment. His interactions with recruited audience members felt far less like dental surgery, as they might in less adept hands, and more like genuine, spontaneous, and meaningful exchange.

In a show with the thesis of this one, that was non-negotiable.

I have been somewhat transparent about my own ethos with mental health before. I live with Bipolar I disorder and PTSD, and I am the granddaughter of a man who died by suicide.

Needless to say, this show and its themes could have hit all wrong. Instead, it felt true, real, responsible, fair, justified, equitable, and like it paid itself off. It felt Stoic. It was not cruel. It was not sappy.

At the end of it, life continued.

And for that reason, Every Brilliant Thing is the most important and responsible show on Broadway right now.