Every Brilliant Thing at NC Stage Co.

In this site’s nearly five years of existence, its reviewers have witnessed Scott Treadway inhabit a range of memorable roles. He’s played a minister, a detective, a reluctant Little League coach, and Doc from West Side Story. He’s done theater-in-the-round, played seven different characters that change with blink-and-miss-it shifts, emceed an annual holiday spectacular, and gushed about The Da Vinci Code live show over Zoom. And every time he’s played Bertie Wooster in one of the Jeeves plays, it’s been a hoot.

Now, with Every Brilliant Thing at NC Stage Co., Treadway excels at another first: a one-man show. Though he’s been up front on social media about enduring some struggles and mishaps in the run’s initial performances, by Feb. 5’s matinee, he’d worked out the kinks and firmly hit his groove.

While it’s tough to say that Treadway’s channeling of Duncan Macmillan’s material is the actor’s  best work since 2018, it’s certainly up there with Stones in His Pockets — the aforementioned seven-role feat — as his most impressive in that span.

It’s also technically not a one-man show, though that detail takes nothing away from his performance. In playing an individual who, prompted by his mother’s suicide attempt while he’s still a youth, seeks to make a list of all the wonderful details the world has to offer to show her that life is worth living, Treadway relies a fair amount on audience participation to help tell the tale.

Prompted by his verbal numerical cues, paper-wielding attendees shout out specific entries from the list while others (or, by happenstance, a few of the number orators) are pulled onto the stage and/or participate from their seats. The interplay between actor and these amateur assistants creates a kinetic environment, combining Treadway’s phenomenal ability to rattle off specific numbers — including long, complex ones — with his natural rapport with theatergoers, whose various quirks he must adjust to on the fly for the show to sustain momentum.

And sustain it he does! Recounting his character’s rollercoaster path and the ways that the list exits and reenters his timeline, Treadway earns plenty of laughs but may elicit a tear or two in the play’s deft handling of all things suicide and the numerous joys of various sizes that are sure to trigger an emotional memory or two.

But as much as Every Brilliant Thing isn’t really a one-man show on the performance side, it definitely isn’t on a technical one, either. The direction given by Charlie Flynn-McIver may seem invisible while Treadway is traipsing through the theater’s three sections, breathlessly giving everyone high fives to the tune of Earth, Wind & Fire, but it’s that very absence of a palpable guiding hand that makes the guidance exceptional.

The frequent collaborators’ chemistry — so gleefully evident in the Jeeves plays with Flynn-McIver as the bumbling Eggy — remains intact in a star/director combination, and is enhanced by NC Stage’s usual reliable crew. Set designer Julie K. Ross provides yet another stunning backdrop, this one coated with plentiful notes from the list on the back wall that feel in dialogue with Sylvia Pierce’s numerous memorable props. And Flynn-McIver’s own sound design, in conjunction with the rest of his talented crew, keep the musical cues coming throughout the brisk hour-long show.

Indeed, as you wander out of the theater, grinning like the village idiot, you may wonder where the time went. While the answer may remain elusive, trust that it was a spin around the clock well spent — thanks to Treadway, Flynn-McIver, and possibly yourself.

Every Brilliant Thing runs through Sunday, Feb. 26, at NC Stage Co. For details and tickets, visit ncstage.org.

(Photos courtesy of NC Stage Co.)