It’s fitting that HBO is choosing to air Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey’s Every Brilliant Thing during the holiday season (starting on Monday). Their filmed version of the one-character play of the same name about depression, suicide and survival is funny, moving and heartening—appropriate viewing at a time of year when many people are not feeling their psychological best despite all the trappings of merriment. Recorded over three performances at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2015, Every Brilliant Thing stars British comedian Jonny Donahoe (best known in the UK for his comedy band Jonny and the Baptists), who co-wrote it with Duncan Macmillan.

We enter the small theater-in-the-round along with the audience, as they file in and take their seats. Donahoe, a stocky, cheerful sort, distributes pieces of paper containing various phrases and instructs the recipients to yell them out at his signal. He then proceeds to tell his character’s decade-spanning life story, punctuated by the items of the show’s title. “Every Brilliant Thing” refers to an inventory of things to live for, started by Donahoe’s narrator at the age of seven when his mother first tried to kill herself. The list—which begins with “ice cream”—would become a running theme in his life, disappearing,  resurfacing, and evolving as he got older (“Hairdressers who listen to what you want”).

Courtesy of HBO

Aside from calling out list entries, audience members are enlisted to impersonate people in the narrator’s life during crucial moments: his father, a veterinarian who puts down his pet dog, a love interest who becomes his wife. It’s a testament to Donahoe’s warmth and enthusiasm that he is able to pull these volunteers into his orbit so easily as he moves among them (the film has no doubt culled the best of the three live shows). Caught up in his story, they rise to the occasion and their improvisations with Donahoe are incredibly moving. We’re shown a lot of audience reaction in general; clearly they are as important to the show as the narrator.

As the list numbers into the hundreds of thousands—we only hear sporadic entries—and the narrator grows up, it gets more specific (“The prospect of dressing up as a Mexican wrestler) and, when he falls in love, romantic. At one point, life gets particularly rough and he struggles to keep the list going. Though the subject is depression, including specific references to the guilt of suicides’ children and the “Werther Effect” (the contagious nature of suicides), there is much humor throughout. The audience participation and interaction, such a crucial aspect of the play, appropriately relates to its subject matter: it’s the opposite of the isolation that often accompanies depression.

Courtesy of HBO

Music, mostly blues and soul, is referenced and heard throughout the show (including Donohue singing and accompanying himself on a keyboard) and there are a few short, blurry reenactment video clips, which don’t take away from the actual show. Given the audience’s stellar performance, one wonders if they received any preparation and how the filming process might have impacted the play. Whatever the case, Every Brilliant Thing is a great hour of entertainment and a very poignant piece of theater.

“If you live a long life and get to the end of it without once feeling depressed, you probably haven’t been paying attention.”

Every Brilliant Thing premieres on HBO on December 26 at 8 pm.

—Marina Zogbi