Daniel Radcliffe Says Every Brilliant Thing Brings People Together Every Night

If you've ever wanted to share a stage with Tony winner Daniel Radcliffe, now may be your chance. The Harry Potter alum returns to Broadway's Hudson Theatre, where he previously completed a record-breaking run in Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along revival as Charley Kringas—a role which won him a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. This time around, he's starring in Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe's Every Brilliant Thing, a solo play with audience participation. Performances began on February 21, ahead of opening night on March 12.

Part of what makes live theater such an exhilarating experience is the audience's ability to affect the energy of each show. In Every Brilliant Thing, this is even more true. "When you talk to people who go to the theater but are not in the theater professionally, people are always surprised when you say the audience is like the other actor in the play every night," Radcliffe tells Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek on The Broadway Show. "But this play really distills that to the nth degree. It's billed as a one-person show and we talk about it that way, but in reality, if we've all done our jobs right it should feel to the audience like they and I have made the show together every night. Theater at its best should feel like a real community effort."

Radcliffe explains that learning the lines for the show on his own was "a very isolated process," but once he got in the rehearsal room and began rehearsing it with practice audiences, "it became so much fun and so enjoyable." The play, which involves a man looking back at his life through a list of moments big and small, engages with difficult themes including depression and suicide. Radcliffe credits Macmillan and Donahoe's writing both for addressing these important topics and for doing so in a way that never gets too dark.

"They have written something which allows the performer to deal with these very heavy things, and then to quick-as-a-flash turn around and be really silly about something else. I think there is something to modeling a world where we can talk about this stuff while being OK that is really powerful," he says. "It manages to be honest without being bleak, to be really emotional and joyous without being sentimental. It just walks a really beautiful, fine line between all those things."

When it comes to the logistics around the audience participation, Radcliffe breaks it down into what he calls low-grade and high-grade. "What I would like to stress is that nobody will be asked to do any of this if they do not want to. We are not pulling people up to make them feel weird or embarrassed or awkward," he says. Before the show starts, Radcliffe and the production's associate directors will chat with audience members in the house. "If we identify someone that's good we'll go up to them and say, 'Hey, how would you feel about doing something on stage with us?' And if they say no, we will move on and let you live your life in peace."

About 80 participants will be given a piece of paper with a number and words on it. "When I shout the number, you shout the words back at me with as much volume and clarity as you can possibly muster," Radcliffe explains of the "low-grade" participation option. The "high-grade" audience participation is an opportunity for five people to come up on stage and perform various parts alongside Radcliffe, including the character's father, school counselor and a university lecturer.

The unconventional nature of the show is something that Radcliffe admits was "initially frightening" to him. After all, it's much easier to be vulnerable on stage when you can only see as far as the first few rows. "One of the things I was most worried about coming into this was that there is something English in me that, when I am making eye contact with somebody, the emotion just goes, 'Don't show it. Keep that in. That's not for them, that's just for you later,'" he shares. "But actually it's becoming really enjoyable, the connection that this show allows you to make with people."

It was, in part, the connections Radcliffe made in this very theater during the run of Merrily that led to him making this his next Broadway role. Starring alongside Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and more, the close relationships weren't an act. "It kind of spoiled me," he admits. "I was like, I don't ever want to have to fake emotion again if I can just have it really authentically happening." With Every Brilliant Thing, authenticity is inevitable and "new connections are being made every night. That was one of the reasons I was like, 'I think this would actually be the perfect next thing for me to do.'"

While Groff has more charisma in his little finger than the average audience member will likely ever possess, that is exactly the point. "There is something much more charming about regular people, once they clue into the fact that they're not being asked to be funny or witty or clever—the only thing they're being asked to be is kind, and kindness is the engine that powers the play," Radcliffe says. "Doing this show shows you how much kindness people have. Right now there's many reasons that one could be losing faith in humanity. And this is a show that, for me at least, restores a huge amount of that."

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