What will survive of us is Love

Star of Every Brilliant Thing, Jon Elves. Photo courtesy of The Criterion. Photo courtesy of The Criterion Theatre.

Every Brilliant Thing at the Criterion Theatre until 7 September 2024.

Review by Annette Kinsella

What will survive of us is love - crowdsourcing optimism show is a bittersweet joy.

Crowdsourcing is very much the watchword of late. Everywhere you look there’s crowdsourcing – corporations appealing for ideas to come up with concepts for groundbreaking designs, businesses working with communities to cocreate playgrounds, universities enlisting residents to curate exhibitions.

In Coventry it’s a subject very close to our hearts given the levels of success – or otherwise – attributed to the City of Culture’s efforts to cocreate art with local residents. (This is not a jab at the City of Culture btw – I don’t have strong feelings about it either way. I definitely enjoyed seeing the Midsummer Fire event at Caludon Castle and I know of loads of people that RAVED about Choir of Man).

But as usual, I digress.  What if what you are crowdsourcing is ways to save a life? This is the fulcrum of Every Brilliant Thing, the innovative new show at Earlsdon's Criterion Theatre.

Telling the story of a mother’s suicide from the viewpoint of her young son, the one-person show offers up an unflinching perspective of the crippling impact of depression on those who love its victims.

The Every Brilliant Thing of the title refers to the efforts of the narrator (we never discover his name, but he's played by Jon Elves) to keep his mother alive by listing everything she has to live for. The audience becomes a part of the show as they are encouraged first to contribute their brilliant things to the list, and then to take the parts of family members or friends who touch the lives of the family. The momentum is maintained excellently by Elves, who manages to turn on a sixpence the tone from pathos to comedy, as he relates the events leading to and following his mother's death.

The sparse set, created by Lilian McGrath with Bill and Erica Young, perfectly complemented the monologue, allowing Elves’ performance to take centre stage. It's cleverly done and makes for uncomfortable viewing, as the paucity of props leaves the audience with nowhere to hide, training a laser-focus on the script's bittersweet message. Ultimately, we are forced to confront the terrible truth that, despite the natural exuberance and likeability of the narrator, not everything can be fixed and not everyone can be saved, no matter how much we may wish it.

And yet. Even given the tragedy of the world we live in, Every Brilliant Thing proves we can still find joy if we look hard enough. It’s hard to know exactly where the uplift in this remarkable show comes from, but there it is, as unshakable as the beam of a streetlamp on a stormy night. It reminds me of the often-quoted Leonard Cohen lyric ‘there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’. Or maybe it's best summed up by one of Coventry’s most famous sons Philip Larkin, who on seeing a statue of two long-dead lovers in Arundel, wrote his famous lines: “That almost-instinct almost true/ what will survive of us is love”.

Every Brilliant Thing at The Criterion until 7 September.  For tickets go to: https://www.criteriontheatre.co.uk/tickets