SpeakEasy Stage Company Presents "Every Brilliant Thing" by Duncan MacMillan - Featuring The Amazing Adrianne Krstansky

Every time I have seen Adrianne Krstansky on stage, I have marveled at the multi-faceted talents she brings to her craft and her art. In the deeply immersive, audience-participation One Act play that is "Every Brilliant Things," she leads us on a journey that is both sobering and inspiring. She portrays a woman whose mother was bipolar and suicidal. We get to hear about how a 7 year-old girl feels when she learns that her mother has been hospitalized because she can find no more reasons to live. And we follow her journey through college, courtship, early adulthood, her own bouts with depression, the dissolution of her marriage to Sam, and the eventual death by suicide of her mother. The thread that ties everything together, and that enlists audience members, is a list of "Brilliant Things" that the little girl began to accumulate when she was 7. #1: Ice Cream!

The list was her attempt to nudge her depressed mother into a place of positivity. That tactic did not work for her mother, but it provided the girl growing into womanhood with a lifeline of hope and affirmation of all the reasons she had to be alive. Playwright Duncan MacMillan, along with Jonny Donahue, developed this play from a short story he had written. Under the Direction of Marianna Bassham, Ms. Krstansky is a master story teller, careening around the corners of the Roberts Studio at the Calderwood Pavilion, engaging with audience members, weaving them into the saga and having them shout out items from the list of Brilliant Things.

Adrianne Krstansky
"Every Brilliant Thing"
by Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe
SpeakEasy Stage Company
Calderwood Pavilion
Through March 31st
Photo by Maggie Hall Photography

While frankly dealing with issues of mental illness, depression and suicide, this invigorating evening of theater is life-affirming in some very creative ways. Music plays an important role in remembering important milestones with her mother, father, Sam, and other key figures in her life. Scenic and Lighting Design is by Eric Levenson, Costume Design by Amanda Ostrow Mason, Sound Design by Abby Shenker.

Adrianne Krstansky
"Every Brilliant Thing"
by Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe
SpeakEasy Stage Company
Calderwood Pavilion
Through March 31st
Photo by Maggie Hall Photography

Audience members were encouraged to write Post-it notes at the end of the play to express their own personal "Brilliant Thing." This was mine: "That feeling sitting in the theatre when the lights dim and the orchestra strikes up the opening chords of a familiar Overture."

The play runs through March 31st.

SpeakEasy Stage Website

Enjoy!

Al