Every Brilliant Thing review - One-man masterclass raises smiles but asks deep questions on Coventry stage

What can a seven-year-old do to make his mum feel better? She’s in hospital after attempting to take her own life, though he doesn’t understand that. But he can see she’s unhappy. So, with the energy and naïve optimism of a child, he tries to cheer her up by making a list of brilliant things – good things like sunshine, or sausages, or your pet dog. The list is random, and compiling it becomes a lifelong obsession. As we see him grow into adulthood, he keeps adding to it, till, by the end of the play, he has reached a million Brilliant Things.

He, Jon Elves in a stunning one-man performance, can’t do this without help. He gets it from the stage characters in his life, and from the audience in the theatre, who call out little brilliant things that are numbered and which pepper the script throughout. They also improvise too, as various members play his father, his beloved Sam with whom he falls in love, and notably Mrs Patterson, an audience member who in character responds to his school-boy appeal for help as his world turns bewilderingly dark. She is one of the brightest rays of light in this tale of hope triumphing over adversity. Whether the audience member on the night I saw the show was primed beforehand or was a naturally gifted improviser who instantly grew a character of her own in the form of Woof, a sock-puppet who listens to his pain without judgement, I don’t know. I just know it was typical of this play in which the audience cannot help but be fully engaged.

Jon Elves proves himself again to be an absolute master of the stage, here arranged in the round. His rapport with the audience is utterly charming. He is not so much a character as a warm and welcoming host, with stories to tell, and lots of laughs. It would be hard not to leave the theatre without a smile on your lips and a feeling that, in spite of all the suffering in the world, there is much to enjoy, much to appreciate. Little things can sometimes make a big difference.

But little things ultimately cannot ‘cure’ the suicidal impulse if that awful feeling is strong enough, and the play does not shy away from this fact. As full of wonder and joy as the list is, it is arguably of greater impact and appeal to those who are affected by another’s suicide. The real subject of the play is the narrator, who is never named, and who goes through his own dark night of the soul, as I believe is not uncommon among close relatives of people who take their own lives. Ultimately, he emerges, scarred and somewhat bruised, as we all do in one way or another. But wiser, perhaps, and with a sense of integrity that is, for him and us, always at risk when we look too closely at the darkness within.

Until September 7. Visit criteriontheatre.co.uk to book.