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NEW YORK\u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/span>What makes life worth living? For hard-core \u201cHarry Potter\u201d fans with money to burn, it might be getting Broadway tickets to interact fleetingly with Daniel Radcliffe in \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing,\u201d an ingenious and touching solo performance piece written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe on the subject of suicide \u2014 or more precisely, on the ordinary joys that militate against such a drastic step.<\/p>\n Radcliffe was breathlessly scampering up and down the aisles of the Hudson Theatre before the show began, enlisting audience members to be participants in the play. Having seen \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing\u201d twice before, once at the Edye<\/a> (the black box at Santa Monica\u2019s BroadStage) starring Donahoe in 2017 and once at the Geffen Playhouse\u2019s intimate Audrey Skirball Kenis<\/a> Theater starring Daniel K. Isaac in 2023, I knew exactly what he was up to.<\/p>\n The play revolves around a list that the narrator began at the tender age of 7 after his mother first attempted suicide. While she was still in the hospital, he started compiling, as much for her benefit as for his own, sources of everyday happiness.<\/p>\n Ice cream, water fights, kind people who aren\u2019t weird and don\u2019t smell unusual. These items are given a number, and audience members assigned a particular \u201cbrilliant thing\u201d are expected to shout out their entry when their number is called. <\/p>\n The list gradually grows in complexity as the narrator gets older. Miss Piggy, spaghetti bolognese and wearing a cape give way to more sophisticated pleasures, such as the way Ray Charles sings the word \u201cYou\u201d in the song \u201cDrown in My Own Tears\u201d or the satisfaction in writing about yourself in the second person.<\/p>\n Music plays a prominent role in \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing,\u201d which was adapted from a monologue\/short story Macmillan wrote called \u201cSleeve Notes.\u201d The narrator\u2019s terribly British father takes refuge from the emotional storms of his household by listening to jazz records in his office. John Coltrane, Cab Calloway, Bill Evans, Nina Simone are favorite artists, and the narrator can tell his father\u2019s mood simply by the record he\u2019s decided to play.<\/p>\n The production, directed by Jeremy Herrin and Macmillan, involves every level of the Hudson Theatre. I assumed I would be safe, occupying an aisle seat in the murderously expensive prime orchestra during a press performance attended by critics. But I wasn\u2019t flashing a pad as my colleague across the aisle from me was doing to ward off any intrusions. And just before the show was about to start, Radcliffe was suddenly kneeling beside my seat asking if the person I was sitting with was my partner.<\/p>\n I told him that we weren\u2019t a couple, just friends, and that I would be the worst person he could possibly ask to perform anything. But Radcliffe wasn\u2019t so easily put off. \u201cLet\u2019s just say that you\u2019re an older couple who have been together for some time,\u201d he whispered. \u201cAnd all you have to do is hand me this box of juice and candy bar when I refer to the older couple.\u201d<\/p>\n OK, what harm could there be? Little did I know that \u201colder couple\u201d was to become \u201cold couple,\u201d a term that seemed to be repeated incessantly, at least to my Gen X ears not yet accustomed to scurrilous millennial attacks! I composed myself by pretending that we were in the world of anti-realism. But in truth, I would like to be the kind of person who would offer an anxious kid in a hospital waiting room a juice box and a candy bar, so maybe the casting wasn\u2019t so far-fetched after all. <\/p>\n Daniel Radcliffe in the Broadway production of \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n (Matthew Murphy)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n A theatergoer was called upon to play the vet who euthanized the narrator\u2019s childhood pet, a dog named Indiana Bones that was symbolized by a coat someone volunteered from the audience. It was the boy\u2019s first experience of death, a difficult concept for a young mind but an important precursor for a boy not given the luxury of existential innocence.<\/p>\n Other audience members, particularly those seated on the stage, played much more elaborate roles. One man, first invited to serve as a stand-in for the narrator\u2019s father, was asked instead to play the boy. He was given one word to say in reply \u2014 \u201cWhy?\u201d \u2014 as his father tries to explain the reason his mother is in the hospital. This same enlisted actor was later called upon to play the dad giving a toast at his son\u2019s wedding, one of the rare occasions when he was able to summon language for the kind of deep feeling he would normally only be able to express through his records.<\/p>\n One kind and patient spectator conscripted to play the school counselor had to remove her shoe to improvise a sock puppet, one of the tools of her empathetic practice. Another audience member sensitively played Sam, the narrator\u2019s love of his life, a relationship that reveals the long-term toll of being raised by a parent suffering from suicidal depression.<\/p>\n Radcliffe\u2019s audience wrangling was as intuitively sharp as his deeply felt performance. He has the comfort of a good retail politician, who\u2019s not afraid of making direct contact with crowds. Two-time Tony winner Donna Murphy, in the house at the reviewed performance, gamely went along when Radcliffe briefly enlisted her luminous services. <\/p>\n Obviously, Radcliffe is the main reason \u201cEvery Brilliant Thing\u201d is on Broadway. The show, which began at Britain\u2019s Ludlow Fringe Festival in 2013, is a gossamer piece, a 70-minute curio best experienced in close quarters without the high expectations and ludicrous prices of New York\u2019s turbo-charged commercial theater. The Hudson Theatre lends a mega-church vibe to the proceedings, but the spirits of theatergoers are nonetheless moved. <\/p>\n