Written in 2013 by Duncan Macmillan together with Johnny Donahoe – who was also the first to perform the work – and presented the same year at the Edinburgh Festival, Every Brilliant Thing is a joyful autobiography marked by lists of “everything that’s worth living for”. With the help of the audience – called on in each performance to serve as a destabilising and innovative element – and through writing of a constantly fast-paced and enjoyable rhythm, the play manages to touch, with sensitivity and a non-superficial levity, on the delicate and complex theme of depression.
Filippo Nigro, the protagonist and director together with Fabrizio Arcuri of this Italian version, brings life to a humane and informal story-confession of special experiences, enlightenments, small manias, encounters, emotions and unforgettable moments, during which focus is constantly set on relationships with his father, his first love, the failure of his marriage, and his search for help in moments of difficulty. In the end, the list becomes more useful for himself than for his mother: «If you live a long life and get to the end of it without ever once having felt crushingly depressed, then you probably haven’t been paying attention.»