It may have become something of a cliche in a world filled with anxiety that you should concentrate on the good things rather than the horrors of daily life – and it turns out to be very good advice.

That’s the premise of the next play at ACT Hub, Every Brilliant Thing, by British playwright Duncan Macmillan, first staged at the National Theatre, London in 2015.

Directed by Joel Horwood, whose productions of Hay Fever and King Lear were seen here last year, the play is to be staged under the umbrella of ACT Hub, not by one of its component companies, Chaika, Free Rain or Everyman. 

To Horwood, this is a terrific opportunity both to say thank you to, and to work with Jarrad West, who plays the central and only role of the Narrator. Horwood has previously acted in West’s productions of Holding the Man, The Importance of Being Earnest and Queers. 

Every Brilliant Thing is an interactive monologue performed with audience participation. The central unnamed boy-narrator is grappling with his mother’s hospitalisation for what is obviously a suicide attempt, so he starts to make a list of everything that’s brilliant about the world, starting with ice cream. I’d start with a cappuccino.

His main motive is to keep his mum alive. Because the subject matter is a very adult one, there’s been a question of how to play it so that and, since he runs the gamut to adulthood in the play, West won’t be mimicking a child, rather telling the story of a real person’s life.

There’s nothing depressing about this play, despite the trigger warnings that are bound to come, as his whole motivation is to give his mother something to live for.

As well, he suspects he might be a genius and goes about facing the challenges of the adult world by writing lists.

Horwood himself has experienced depression and when first alerted to the play by a friend, he was told: “You’re depressed! You love writing lists! You’ll love this play!”

Lists serve many different purposes. I was taught the practice in stage management courses at drama school and journalists make lists, too. But in Macmillan’s play they penetrate deeper into the human heart.

Horwood, who had only done a small amount of assistant directing in Sydney before he came to Canberra, admires West as “an actors’ director”, telling me: “You can really tell the difference when a director has come from an acting background and understands what an actor needs to know.

“I like to think I straddle both places in my overall vision for a production, so that all of the elements come together. I try to achieve honesty with the audience and that’s something you don’t always get with a very curated production.”

Nonetheless, he agrees that a director has to take firm decisions and he’s been grappling with whether to leave the house lights on, which can be very unpopular with theatregoers but makes sense in this play. There needs to be visual engagement as West sits on the stage for a little over an hour.

The set will be simple – a couple of props, a piano and a bookshelf, a stripped back, “very much a symbolic space”, he says.

The tradition of direct address to the audience is quite an old one in the theatre, most famous being Kafka’s A Report to an Academy and it’s a particular kind of storytelling, so Horwood keeps reminding West not to do too much “acting” because he must remain open and vulnerable while weaving a story about the impact of suicide on families.

But the play does not dwell in the darkness for too long, Horwood is sure, and the message is uplifting. 

Every Brilliant Thing, ACT Hub, Spinifex Street Kingston, August 14-25. 

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