Every Brilliant Thing
Opening Night: March 12, 2026
Theater: Hudson Theatre
Website: everybrilliantthing.com
One Actor. One Audience. One million reasons. Tony Award® winner Daniel Radcliffe returns to the stage in the hilarious and heartwarming play, Every Brilliant Thing. In this one-of-a-kind solo show, a man looks back at his life and the glimmers of hope that carried him through. All told through a list of every wonderful, beautiful, and delightful thing—big, small, and everything in between—that makes life worth living. After being performed in over 80 countries, this beloved hit finally arrives on Broadway for thirteen weeks only at The Hudson Theatre.
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March 12, 2026
Radcliffe doesn’t just do away with the fourth wall, he manages to expand his magical aren’t-people-wonderful optimism to include the whole orchestra, mezzanine and balcony.
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March 12, 2026
That some 50 minutes later Radcliffe would have me, along with the rest of the crowd, stand up to do the wave without an ounce of cynicism speaks to his extraordinary charm as a performer, and to the writers Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s ability to fully disarm us, and overcome the almost insurmountable corniness its premise threatens.
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March 12, 2026
Even Radcliffe’s seemingly effortless charisma can’t entirely disguise a shallow, generic feeling at the heart of Every Brilliant Thing. For all its noble intentions, this mixture of TED Talk, improv, and interactivity adds up to little more than a glorified “it gets better” homily.
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March 12, 2026
In their arresting play, “Every Brilliant Thing,” co-creators Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe are tackling suicide and deep-seated depression with a levity and wit rarely depicted on stage before. Starring Tony Award-winner Daniel Radcliffe, the solo production is unique and thrilling, reminding viewers of life’s magical and, yes, brilliant delights.
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March 12, 2026
He’s a human ping-pong ball, a fizzing sparkler, a genuinely effervescent, generous, and curious individual whose dynamic is less Former Star of $35 Billion Media Franchise and more Adorable Nerd Who Just Asked You To the They Might Be Giants Show. At the same time, his charm isn’t hapless or floppy — it’s given crispness and integrity by a quick brain and an apparently sound heart.
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March 12, 2026
Primo tickets for Every Brilliant Thing cost more than $400, and if you don’t mind spending top dollar on a dime-thin show, this one won’t disappoint; it’s diverting and at times even touching. But, appealing though he is, there may be better things on which to spend that money than 70 minutes of Radcliffe doing crowd work.
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March 12, 2026
Every Brilliant Thing is unsparing and clear-eyed in its presentation of the realities of depression and suicide, yet glows with a hopeful, life-affirming aura that convincingly depicts the value of struggle, and the beauty in tenacity.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 12, 2026
Watching one of the most famous faces on planet Earth literally work the room — bouncing manically from row to row and enthusiastically thanking those who agree to participate — is an absolute delight and sets the perfect tone for what is to come.
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March 12, 2026
For its Broadway debut, the production wisely preserves the intimacy that defined earlier stagings. The Hudson Theatre has effectively been arranged to recreate the closeness of the Barrow Street Theatre experience. Some audience members sit onstage alongside those in the auditorium, surrounding the playing area and becoming part of the performance environment.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 12, 2026
That alertness keeps the show humming for its single 70-minute act, even as its straight text reads like something a precocious college student might write. Basically, the show works because Radcliffe more or less wills it to. It would be misleading to call his performance a high-wire act, because he intentionally stays closer to the audience’s level. As a medium-wire act, though, it’s still plenty brilliant.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 12, 2026
A scruffy-faced Radcliffe, twinkling accessible geniality in jeans and a sweatshirt, zips up and down the cavernous theater as though waging a one-man campaign against the isolation epidemic. There’s no denying that Harry Potter has matured into an assured stage actor. His Tony-winning performance in “Merrily We Roll Along” should have put to rest any doubts, but the glare of his fame can still obscure his serious chops.
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With a 70-minute runtime and a heavy focus on audience participation, it’s almost impossible for the story, or the Narrator himself, to achieve the emotional depth people look for in a story as personal as one about suicidal depression. Maybe it’s the nature of a show so dependent on interactivity: The real magic comes from the transitory experience each new audience has together. And maybe it’s the point Macmillan is trying to make: There are many ways to approach a subject so dark, and he has chosen to focus on the positive (or should I say, the “brilliant”) rather than getting into the inevitably tragic details. I left delighted by the experience, albeit wishing the story had more substance. But regardless of whether Macmillan’s approach works for you, Radcliffe will certainly do his damndest to charm you all the while.
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March 12, 2026
Since its star-is-born run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014 and winding up off-Broadway that same year, “Every Brilliant Thing” has grown a bit dated and, frankly, quaint. Social media and the internet don’t play a role, for instance, when they are enormously relevant to the mental health conversation. And the show’s tone sometimes brings to mind the old positive-thinking craze, a la Shonda Rhimes’ “Year of Yes.” Its humor can lean hokey as well, but that’s forgivable. This is aiming to be uplifting — not “Oh, Mary!” It’s Radcliffe’s vitalizing and vulnerable performance, a cardio workout both physically and emotionally, that’s the reason to go. He’s its most brilliant thing.
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But in a world where pain, cruelty, and violence are all too present, the notion of listing and remembering all that is good—favorite things, brilliant things—provides an anchor to hold onto. As an evening with Radcliffe in Every Brilliant Thing at the Hudson powerfully demonstrates.
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Any doubts were immediately quashed upon entering the venue and encountering the actor working the room with the energy of a Borscht Belt tummler (google it). Running from the stage on which audience members were seated on three sides to the orchestra to the theater’s two upper levels, Radcliffe proved a warm and welcoming host. He displays so much charm, charisma and boundless vivacity that he made the nearly thousand-seat venue feel like a living room. (Of course, it helped to be sitting in theater critic seats as opposed to the balcony).
READ THE REVIEWMarch 12, 2026
But Daniel Radcliffe is also a witty, energetic and generous host, a cool hand at comedy (as we saw in “Franklin Shepard INC”) and something more. When his character says things like: “If you got all the way through life without ever being heart crushingly depressed, you probably haven’t been paying attention,” the pain he communicates makes it clear that he’s been paying attention.
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March 12, 2026
This kind of audience participation happens dozens of times throughout the play with theatergoers playing Radcliffe’s father, teacher, girlfriend-wife, bridesmaids, etc. (All of them just happen to be sitting in the front row on the stage.) There’s applause for all these amateur performances. I’ve never understood why people applaud the performances of amateurs when they paid to see professional actors. This is Broadway, after all. Much worse are the dozens of theatergoers who, pre-curtain, have been handed cards with words printed on them. These words are the every brilliant thing(s) of the show’s title, and people in the audience shout them whenever Radcliffe calls a specific number. For example, when he shouts, “One!,” someone obediently shouts, “ice cream!” Other numerals provoke such twee responses as “a much needed sneeze” and “wearing a cape.” Many of these responses are inaudible even though some theatergoers’ voices sound amplified.
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