Every Brilliant Thing: Now and A Decade Ago

A show called "Every Brilliant Thing" is currently on Broadway. Matt and Helen went to see it.

Playbill from Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway.

So look, I'm only mentioning this so I can be one of the cool crowd who talks very knowledgeably about some show currently on Broadway  because they also saw the original and/or earlier revivals of that same show. My friend Danielle from book club and her cousin Greg do this. They see the revivals and then hammer through a detailed critique like it's a dereliction of duty not to give excellent notes.

For example, out front the theater after we all saw Gypsy last year, both of them launched into comparing and contrasting Audrey whatserface with all the prior leading ladies they'd seen portray Mama Rose using words like "vibrato" and "mezzo soprano." 

I think Danielle said she'd seen nine (9) revivals of the production. NINE! Her dad was on the Tony committee so she got an early start. 

So anyway, this is my one (1) time to shine and I'm taking it like the brilliant thing it is. 

So yeah, ten years ago, Tom and I saw the ORIGINAL version of Every Brilliant Thing not on Broadway but in Greenwich Village. The show starred the guy who wrote the play. 

And oh, yes, I scanned the playbill and kept it on my computer because yeah. It was a beautiful and haunting one-man show. I felt it warranted taking the time and effort to rip up the playbill into single pages and jam them all into my scanner hoping I got out all the staples but not really checking because I know how to turn anything into a huge extravaganza with high stakes.

Every Brilliant Thing Playbill from 2015
in the Barrow Theater in Greenwich Village.

There's audience participation, and during the production we saw ten years ago, Tom and I were *both* selected to read one of the brilliant things, as per the title of the show. 

On cue, Tom read:

Things with Stripes: Definitely Brilliant!

Oh that's right, I also scanned the cue cards we were given to read. Of course, I did not scan any of these items at the same time, which meant they were not on my computer in the same place, named in the same way and in any way easy to locate just now. Because I am a martyr for my art. 

Should this blog meet that qualification which I truly doubt.

Anyway, I read:

the prospect of dressing up as a Mexican Wrestler.
Definitely a Brilliant thing!

When I read "the prospect of dressing up as a Mexican wrestler," I really emphasized the "prospect" part of it. I just felt this is what the line called for. 

After I read it, the one-man of the one-man show literally paused for a moment and told me I had read the line like a chef's kiss. He said something about how, yeah, it's all about the PROSPECT of doing the thing, more than the thing itself.

I played it down, but secretly it was all very thrilling. It's the closest I will ever get to... I was going to say Broadway and that might be fair in this instance but it's also probably the closest I will get to like Greenwich Village theater or maybe even community theater. So there's also that.

Besides the two Brilliant Things that Tom and I had the vast honor of reading, my next favorite brilliant thing which I remember from ten years ago was "Christopher Walken’s hair." 

And that is particularly apropos to this very minute because literally yesterday, Tom texted Helen this meme after she said she went on a 4-hour birding tour in Central Park:

His hair is still Brilliant.

I say all this to say, after I got home from the theater ten years ago, I made my own list of Brilliant Things. Here they are. Not sure if all of them hold up:

1. The shoemaker who used to be on 7th and moved to 8th and who delivers my shoes to me after he fixes them and his prices are much less and he does better work. 
2. effortlessly finding the lid to the tupperware.
3. finishing something.
4. cow costumes. friends in them.
5. japanese food in a small private cubicle.
6. swiffer picker uppers.
7. Reading books in bars with wood paneling.
8. Places that smell like eggs frying.
9. Moss-scented breezes.
10. when your plan works out.
11. accidentally meeting up with friends.
12. friendly vampires.
13. men wearing red pants to a picnic.
14. a new tube of chapstick.