Duncan Macmillan Archives - The Play Podcast

102 – Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe

by Douglas Schatz | Sep 25, 2025 | Podcast Episodes

Every Brilliant Thing_Jonny Donahoe_@sohoplace_credit Danny Kaan _0T4A6048

Jonny Donahoe
Every Brilliant Thing
Soho Place Theatre, London, August 2025
Photo by Danny Kaan

102 – Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe

The narrator begins their story from when they were seven years old, and their mother has been taken to hospital because she has “done something stupid”. In fact, the something stupid she has done is to attempt to take her own life. The seven-year-old child decides on that day to start a list, a list of “everything brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for.” A list for mum.

This is the premise for Duncan Macmillan’s funny and heart-rending one-person show, Every Brilliant Thing. In fact, this is not really a one-person show, because although the narrator is telling us the story, the audience also plays an important part in creating the show in every performance. Members of the audience call out items on the list, several individuals are invited to play characters, and some of the props used in the show are sourced spontaneously from the audience. The one person whose show it has largely been for the last ten years, is comedian, writer and performer, Jonny Donahoe, who is also credited with co-creating the play.

The play that Duncan and Jonny created started life in 2013, and in the decade or so since it has been seen in over 70 countries around the world. As we record this episode, Every Brilliant Thing, has finally reached London’s West End, with a rotating cast of five different performers appearing as the narrator over its three-month run at the Soho Place theatre, including Jonny Donahoe, Lennie Henry, Ambika Mod, Sue Perkins and Minnie Driver.

The always-brilliant critic, Lyn Gardner, described Every Brilliant Thing as “one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see about depression.” She is spot on – it is funny and poignant and finally life affirming.

I am very privileged to be joined in this episode by the show’s two creators, Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe.

Duncan Macmillan

Duncan Macmillan’s plays include his adaptation of 1984 co-written with Robert Icke; Lungs, his funny and prophetic look at the personal impact of climate change on our everyday lives, which we covered in episode seven of the podcast; People, Places and Things, his blistering portrait of addiction which we also talked about on the podcast with Duncan himself and director Jeremy Herrin when the play was revived in London last year.

Most recently Duncan wrote the English texts for Thomas Ostermeier’s striking adaptations of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and Chekhov’s The Seagull, both of which have been on stage in London recently, and which we have also covered on the podcast.

007 Lungs by Duncan Macmillan
082 People Places & Things by Duncan Macmillan

Recommended Play

Duncan recommended seven methods of killing kylie jenner by Jasmine Lee-Jones

Photo by Natasha Krstic-Howe

Jonny Donahoe

In addition to being the co-creator and original performer of Every Brilliant Thing, Jonny Donahoe also writes and performs with his touring comedy group, Jonny and the Baptists. He has written several plays including Anna/Anastasia, 30 Christmases, and Forgiveness, as well as appeared regularly on BBC Radio 4 in The Now Show, Sketchorama, Fresh from the Fringe, and Infinite Monkey Cage, among many others.

Recommended Play

Jonny recommended An Intervention by Mike Bartlett

Photo by Danny Kaan

Become a Patron!

Since I launched The Play Podcast in April 2020, I have managed to eschew any form of advertising or sponsorship, and I would like to continue to produce the podcast without doing so. I therefore invite you to help me to continue to make the podcast by becoming a Patron. Additional benefits available to Patrons include Footnotes on the plays covered in the podcast, as well as early access to The Play Review. For details click here Thank you very much for listening and for your support. Douglas

The Texts

If you are interested in buying the play text or other related books, we’d be delighted if you choose to purchase them from our selected partners Bookshop.org and Blackwell’s. Not only will you be supporting independent booksellers, we will also earn a small commission on every book you purchase, which helps to keep the podcast going. Click on the cover to buy from our chosen partner. Thank you.

115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.

082 – People, Places & Things by Duncan Macmillan

by Douglas Schatz | Jun 20, 2024 | Podcast Episodes

082 – People, Places & Things by Duncan Macmillan

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Duncan Macmillan’s play, People, Places & Things, is an unflinching portrait of the real struggle and pain of battling addiction, as well as an exploration of how we seek to define our identity to our self and to anyone else. The play premiered at the National Theatre in 2015, before transferring to the West End the following year, and then on to New York a year later. Denise Gough won awards for her electrifying performance as the disturbed actress, Emma, and as we record this episode she is reprising her role nearly a decade on at the Trafalgar theatre in London’s West End. It is an unforgettable, virtuoso performance: fierce, funny, poignant and technically completely commanding.

Duncan Macmillan was surprised by the play’s initial commercial success, saying “it’s about a difficult person, being difficult to other people who are in a difficult situation!” It is a fascinating, funny and challenging play, and an exhilarating piece of theatre.

The current revival is directed by Jeremy Herrin, who also directed the original production. I am therefore especially delighted to be able to talk in this episode with both the author, Duncan Macmillan, and the play’s director, Jeremy Herrin.

Duncan Macmillan

Duncan Macmillan’s plays include Lungs from 2011, which was revived in 2019 at the Old Vic with Claire Foy and Matt Smith, and then live streamed from the empty auditorium in the early days of Covid in June 2020; his adaptation of 1984 co-written with Robert Icke; People, Places & Things; 2071 (co-written with Chris Rapley); Every Brilliant Thing, with Jonny Donahoe, which was a break-out hit at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014, and which returns to Edinburgh ten years on in 2024; Rosmersholm (adapted from Ibsen); An Enemy of the People (English version of Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation of Ibsen); City of Glass (adapted from Paul Auster).

We covered Lungs in episode 7 of the podcast: 07 Lungs
We covered An Enemy of the People in episode 77 of the podcast: 077 An Enemy of the People

Recommended Play

Duncan recommended Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris.

Photo by Natasha Krstic-Howe

Jeremy Herrin

Jeremy Herrin has been a director of Live Theatre Newcastle, The Royal Court, and Headlong theatre companies. Highlights of his distinguished career include directing People, Places & Things (National Theatre, West End and New York); Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies for the RSC; James Graham’s plays This House, Labour of Love and Best of Enemies (West End); A Mirror (Almeida and Trafalgar Theatre); Ulster American (Riverside Studios); All My Sons (The Old Vic); The Visit, The Plough and the Stars; Statement of Regret (National Theatre); The Nether, That Face, South Downs, Absent Friends, Death and the Maiden,The Glass Menagerie (West End); The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare’s Globe); Junkyard, The Absence of War (Headlong); Observe the Sons Marching Towards the Somme (International Tour); Noises Off (Lyric Hammersmith); Haunted Child, The Heretic, Kin, Spur of the Moment, Off the Endz, The Priory, Tusk Tusk, The Vertical Hour (Royal Court); The Moderate Soprano (Hampstead); Marble (The Abbey Dublin); The Family Reunion (Donmar Warehouse).

Jeremy is a founding director of Second Half Productions.

Recommended Play

Jeremy recommended The Visit by Friedrich Durrenmatt.

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes to our episode on Duncan Macmillan’s devastating and humane portrait of addiction, People, Places & Things, include observations on Emma’s propensity to lie, and on how she uses her intelligence to resist the prescribed treatments and to delude herself.

Footnotes for Patrons

Become a Patron!

Since I launched The Play Podcast in April 2020, I have managed to eschew any form of advertising or sponsorship, and I would like to continue to produce the podcast without doing so. I therefore invite you to help me to continue to make the podcast by becoming a Patron. Additional benefits available to Patrons include Footnotes on the plays covered in the podcast, as well as early access to The Play Review. For details click here Thank you very much for listening and for your support. Douglas

The Texts

If you are interested in buying the play text or other related books, we’d be delighted if you choose to purchase them from our selected partners Bookshop.org and Blackwell’s. Not only will you be supporting independent booksellers, we will also earn a small commission on every book you purchase, which helps to keep the podcast going. Click on the cover to buy from our chosen partner. Thank you.

115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.

Duncan Macmillan

by Douglas Schatz | Jun 19, 2024 | Contributor

Duncan Macmillan

Duncan Macmillan’s plays include Lungs from 2011, which was revived in 2019 at the Old Vic; his adaptation of 1984 co-written with Robert Icke; People, Places & Things; 2071 (co-written with Chris Rapley); Every Brilliant Thing, with Jonny Donahoe, which was a break-out hit at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014, and which has been seen in over 70 different countries around the world since, finally arriving in London’s West End in 2025; Rosmersholm (adapted from Ibsen); An Enemy of the People (English version of Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation of Ibsen); City of Glass (adapted from Paul Auster); and The Seagull (English version for Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation of Chekhov).

We covered Lungs in episode 7 of the podcast: 07 Lungs
An Enemy of the People in episode 77: 077 An Enemy of the People
People Places & Things in episode 82, with Duncan: 082 People, Places & Things
The Seagull in episode 52: 052 The Seagull
Every Brilliant Thing in episode 102, with Duncan: 102 Every Brilliant Thing