Review: EVERY BRILLIANT THING, starring Minnie Driver, @sohoplace
The hit play comes to its close at @sohoplace with its final actor Minnie Driver.
By: Franco Milazzo Oct. 22, 2025
If you’re anything like me — a man of taste, decency, and a healthy suspicion of anything that smells of group therapy — you approach a one-person play about depression with the same enthusiasm you’d reserve for an unexpected colonoscopy. The title, Every Brilliant Thing, only amplified my well-fed scepticism. It sounds like it should be a self-congratulatory bumper sticker on an electric vehicle or the name of a hastily manufactured boy band.
So why am I bothering with this, you ask? The big draw here is the raft of top-name actors lining up one after another to take on the solo role. The first, Lenny Henry, was a knight to remember with his cultured Brummieness giving deep flavour to proceedings and he was followed by Jonathan Donague, Ambika Mod and Sue Perkins. Minnie Driver is the final one to take on the role of the unnamed narrator, offering a veneer of cut-glass English plumminess over a swirling maelstrom of dark thoughts and even darker intentions.
Even with its unpromising title, this really is a remarkable piece of work despite being crafted from the same loathsome material as the average West End musical: sentimentality. Just a quick stroll through the plot points would suggest a dark underbelly heavily covered by pink fuzzy fluff: the narrator tells the story of a childhood list, started when his mother unsuccessfully gives into her suicidal ideations and continued through school, university and marriage.
The list itself is simply a catalogue of things that make life worth living. 1. Ice cream. 7. The smell of old books. 10. Staying up past your bedtime. You get the idea. It’s simultaneously a bulwark against the abyss, a bullet-point manifesto for a cheerful life and a design for an existentialist heaven.
Like Conor McPherson’s Girl from the North Country — another terminally bleak work with a heart of gold — this play makes you feel something, without once telling you what you ought to be doing about it. What started out in much smaller surroundings at the Edinburgh Fringe translates well to the impressively designed and still new-ish @sohoplace. There were raised eyebrows at its inception a few years ago but it has retained its at sign and its mission to bring state of the art theatre for everyone to everyone. In that latter regard, Every Brilliant Thing is an excellent example of what makes this venue stand out from its more established peers.
At heart, it is a work that cuts across social and cultural boundaries to an issue that — directly or indirectly, whether people like to admit it or not — affects everyone. And rather than self-harm being a facile theme there just to evoke empathy from some (and sympathy from others), there’s a lecture of sorts mid-show on “the Werther Effect”, a documented psychological and sociological phenomenon whereby reports or depictions of a suicide lead to an uptick in suicides generally. It’s science with a small “s”, for sure, but a big step up from how many other dramas tackle subjects like this.
Theatrical purists will no doubt be mentally heaving into a plastic bucket when the audience interaction starts but harken here and take note: this is exactly what post-pandemic punters need, want and frankly deserve. The stay-at-home orders are a thing of the past but the mental effects will be felt for years, if not decades.
The unspoken contract where theatregoers turn up, sit down, watch silently, applaud then go home is no longer a surefire formula for success. Ticket sales for West End shows have stalled year-on-year while the quality and quantity of productions that give the audience a degree of agency and interaction (whether it is immersive adventures like Phantom Peak or the long-awaited return of world-class clowns like Doctor Brown, Meow Meow and Puddles Pity Party) have skyrocketed.
This movement away from the classic concept of theatre is neither a fad nor a short-term reaction but, at the rate that productions are being churned out, a wake-up call that can only be heeded now or never. Perhaps this humble play can serve as an ambitious pointer to a more hopeful future for the stage industry, especially the classics; say it quietly but even the Bard’s works can be made more Brilliant.
Every Brilliant Thing continues at @sohoplace until 8 November.
Photo credit: Danny Kaan
