Every Brilliant Thing Turns a List
of Joys into a Lifeline for Living

Watching Stone Soup Theatre Company's current production of Every Brilliant Thing at Mettlesome Theater in Durham is less like sitting down to watch a play and more like being invited into the home of a new friend. In a holiday season packed with spectacle, this one-person show -- performed by Brittni Shambaugh Addison and directed by Lavour Addison -- stands out precisely because it is so small, so simple, and so full of heart.

Set in the flexible, intimate black box at the Mettlesome Theater on the Golden Belt Arts campus, the evening begins as you come into the theater as the performer moves through the audience, handing out slips of paper with handwritten items with numbers and asking us to read our line aloud when our number is called. The list is the child's idea to lure her suicidal mother back toward life. She begins a life's work of making a list of "every brilliant thing" worth sticking around for.

Written by Duncan Macmillan, with Jonny Donahoe, Every Brilliant Thing is an interactive, one-person play about depression, love, and the lengths we go to for the people we can't bear to lose. The story begins when the narrator is six years old and her mother is hospitalized after "doing something stupid." To help her remember reasons to live, the child starts a list:

1. Ice cream.
2. Kung Fu movies.
3. Burning things.
4. Laughing so hard you shoot milk out your nose.

As the narrator grows up, the list keeps growing too -- passed between family members, lost, rediscovered, and expanded. The audience anticipates and calls out these moments of joy for her.

Critics have praised the play as one of the funniest pieces of theater ever written about depression, precisely because it doesn't shy away from the hard parts. The writing acknowledges the guilt of not being able to "fix" someone else's pain and the complicated legacy of living with a parent's illness, while still insisting that delight and silliness have a vital place in healing and survival.

This production showcases Brittni Shambaugh Addison, whose mix of technical polish and easy warmth is no accident. Addison is a professional director, actor, educator, and playwright now based in Durham, where she teaches and directs theater at Carolina Friends School in Durham. Before moving to North Carolina, she spent five years as education director at Creede Repertory Theatre in Colorado and has acting and directing credits with companies across the country. She holds a BA in Theatre from Wake Forest University and an MFA in Directing from the University of Hawai'i® at Mānoa.

All of that experience shows. Addison handles the show's improvisational demands with a breezy and winsome confidence: she knows how to read a room, how to gently coax shy volunteers, and how to make a hesitant audience member feel like a co-conspirator rather than a hostage. I can attest to this personally as someone unexpectedly selected to take part on stage. Years of working in ensemble settings also pay off here; even though she's technically the only actor onstage, she treats the crowd as a true partner, listening as actively as she speaks.

Every Brilliant Thing, directed by Lavour Addison, stars Brittni Shambaugh Addison

Vocally and physically, the performance is finely tuned and amazingly energetic. Addison can pivot from giddy childhood storytelling to adult weariness in a breath, tracking the narrator's journey from six-year-old list maker to a grown-up overcoming her own depression. It's the sort of performance that feels casual in the moment and carefully crafted in hindsight.

Addison is warm without being saccharine, funny without undercutting the pain at the center of the story. She improvises lightly with the crowd -- riffing on an audience member's delivery of a line, or recruiting volunteers to play the dad, a vet, a university lecturer -- but never makes participation feel like a trap. You sense a quietly rigorous structure underneath the looseness; the improvisation is real; but it's in service of the story, not a detour from it.

This show deals directly with mental illness, attempted suicide, and the heartbreak of putting down a beloved family pet, even though the overall arc is ultimately hopeful. That honesty gives the evening weight; audience members know they're not simply there for a warm-and-fuzzy "feel-better" show, but for a conversation that treats them like adults.

As director, Lavour Addison leans into Mettlesome's cozy scale and Stone Soup's community-theater DNA. Rather than fight the fact that this is a borrowed comedy venue with chairs crammed close to the stage, the production uses that proximity as a feature. There's no set to hide behind; a few simple props and lighting shifts are enough to suggest different times and places. The focus stays exactly where it belongs: on the storyteller, the list, and the faces of the people listening.

Stone Soup describes the piece as "a powerful, interactive, one-person show about depression and the lengths we will go to for those we love," and that's exactly what this production delivers. In a cultural moment where headlines are saturated with conflict and crisis, this deep conversation with a friend feels almost healing. You leave having laughed a lot, maybe cried a little, and -- if the show has done its work -- mentally started your own list on the ride home.

This Stone Soup/Mettlesome collaboration is exactly the kind of theater Durham does best: intimate, inventive, rooted in community, and unafraid to tackle hard subjects with both honesty and tenderness. If you're looking for a holiday outing that's meaningful without being dour, uplifting without being sentimental, Every Brilliant Thing is one that might just send you back into the world, seeing a few more brilliant things than you did before.

EVERY BRILLIANT THING (In Person at 5 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, 13, and 14, plus 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10th), written by Duncan Macmillan, with creative consultant Jonny Donahoe, directed by Lavour Addison, and performed by Brittni Shambaugh Addison (Stone Soup Theatre Company in the Mettlesome Theater in Durham). PRESENTER: https://www.stonesouptheatreco.com/, https://www.facebook.com/StoneSoupTheatreCo/, https://www.instagram.com/stonesouptheatreco/, and https://www.tiktok.com/@stonesouptheatre. 2025-26 SEASON: https://www.stonesouptheatreco.com/current-season/. VENUE: https://thisismettlesome.com/, https://linktr.ee/hellomettlesome, https://www.facebook.com/thisismettlesome, and https://www.instagram.com/thisismettlesome. DIRECTIONS: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ToMAJDS26MJiRdCk9. EVERY BRILLIANT THING (2014 Off-Broadway and 2026 Broadway solo show and interactive monologue): https://everybrilliantthing.com/, https://www.iobdb.com/Production/5918, https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-show/every-brilliant-thing-544430, https://www.facebook.com/brilliantbway, https://www.instagram.com/brilliantbway, https://www.tiktok.com/@brilliantbway, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Macmillan_(playwright)#Every_Brilliant_Thing, and https://x.com/brilliantbway. THE SCRIPT (excerpts): https://books.google.com/books. STUDY GUIDE (Orlando Shakes): https://www.orlandoshakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Every-Brilliant-Thing-Study-Guide.pdf. DUNCAN MACMILLAN (English playwright, screenwriter, and theater director): https://www.casarotto.co.uk/clients/duncan-macmillan, https://www.iobdb.com/CreditableEntity/45376, https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-organization/duncan-macmillan-with-jonny-donahoe-544435, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7816594/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Macmillan_(playwright). JONNY DONAHUE (Royal Tunbridge Wells, England-born comedian, playwright, and actor): https://www.jonnyandthebaptists.co.uk/, https://www.iobdb.com/CreditableEntity/45377, https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-organization/duncan-macmillan-with-jonny-donahoe-544435, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9315934/, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonny_Donahoe. CONTENT ADVISORY: Stone Soup Theatre Company cautions, "While this show is ultimately uplifting, it deals with the subjects of mental illness and attempted suicide, and relays a story of having to put down a family pet." TICKETS: $32.30 ($27.05 students), plus taxes, except a Pay-What-You-Can performance at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10th. Click here to buy tickets. INFORMATION: info@stonesouptheatreco.com. PLEASE DONATE TO: Stone Soup Theatre Company. Kurt Benrud's Triangle Review Review Permalink.

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