Brilliant Things Beginning

Three years ago Jonny Donahoe first brought Every Brilliant Thing to Center Stage as a benefit for New Beginnings – the longtime Santa Barbara nonprofit that has often employed the arts and entertainers to raise money and draw awareness to its mission of serving its underprivileged clientele with mental health services and more.Donahoe’s audience-conversant one-man show begins with a seven-year-old boy creating a list of the joys of life in order to combat his mother’s suicidal depression. Now he’s returning with his best friend and theatrical partner Paddy Gervers – who serves as a director of the show – to not only reprise Every Brilliant Thing but also perform twice together in their hit British musical-comedy duo Jonny & The Baptists. 

This will be the U.S. debut for the duo that regularly sells out theaters across Britain and elsewhere with a blend of sharp humor and heartfelt stories that link personal tragedy, grief and hope. Here are excerpts from a Zoom call with Donahoe, later joined by Gervers minutes after directing a performance of Brilliant in London’s West End. 

MJ. Why do you think the play has been so popular?

Jonny Donahoe [JD]. Well, first of all, we’re telling a story of this little boy who wants to help his mother find a reason to live, and it becomes a lifelong project for him. What makes it especially compelling is that the performer uses the people in the room to navigate the telling of that story. The metaphor is very simple, that we are a community and that it is through sharing that we deal with the things that are hardest. Our biggest battle and threat right now is mental health, and the best way to deal with that is by being open and honest and saying what we really feel. Letting other people in is how we heal more. It’s become one of the top five most performed plays around the world because we’re in an endemic situation where mental health is seemingly unsolvable. 

MJ. I understand you’ve had depression and mental illness in your family?

JD. Who hasn’t? There’s a long-checkered history of extremely sad stories in my own life, and it’s something that you inherit. I know I have clinical depression and I monitor it almost constantly. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why it’s such a big part of my [theatrical] work. 

MJ. Is there improvisation in Every Brilliant Thing? 

JD. About 25 percent, which is mostly when I interact with five of the people who I give cards to read during the show. I chat with them in advance to see who I connect with, and then we really interact and do quite a lot of live things. 

MJ. What are your five things that make life worth living right now? 

JD. First and foremost, my two daughters, who are three and seven and just amazing – really chaotic and loud, but wonderful… Let’s see… The singer songwriter Tori Amos, who I’ve loved all my life. She recorded a voice note for me when a friend interviewed her on a podcast. It’s one of my favorite moments in my whole life. Number three would be my dog, Barney, who died about 15 years ago, but I still love without any question. I can’t think of anything else. Well, I’ll add gin and tonic. (We’re interrupted when Paddy arrives). 

MJ. How did the two of you come together to create Jonny & The Baptists?

JD. We’d both had a dream of putting music and comedy together as a live act. We made a show as a side project, figuring we’d go back to stand up and do our individual things, but we kept getting booked. Here we are 13 years later, and now it’s 80 percent of what we do. 

MJ. How did you come up with the name?

JD. John the Baptist, who was not the Messiah, but the guy who said the Messiah is coming. We like the idea of being the messenger. It was my old band name and we should have changed it to Paddy and Johnny, but it’s too late now.

Paddy Gervers [PG]. I’m OK with that. I get to be plural because I’m the Baptists, so I’m three out of the four words.

MJ. Mental health as well as politics are also a big part of the duo, correct? 

JD. We are very up for talking about personal things. Our last show was called The Happiness Index, which is actually a real British thing. It’s about Paddy’s 10 years of dealing with clinical depression and the medications he’s taken. But we wanted the show to be incredibly funny and joyful and light as well as actually serious about those things. We look at trauma and pain and why it’s important to get up every day and keep going. 

It’s very British, so the skeleton narrative of what we’re doing in Santa Barbara is from the show, but we did our best to adapt it for America. 

PG. What we did was take our favorite parts of shows we’ve done in the past, mostly ones that are laser focused on mental health and grief, and write some new things examining the importance of community in regards to mental health and what it feels like to open up to your friends. 

Honestly, we’re not sure if some of the references might be too British, but we did run it by an American friend. I’m interested to see how it translates in America, because friendship is truly at the heart of what Johnny & The Baptists is. Brits are known for not talking about our emotions and not sharing those things with our friends and families or going to therapy or going to get help or stuff like that. So I think we have spent a long time becoming each other’s support network and having to fulfill those roles for one another. But as Brits we rip on each other all the time. I want to see how that feels overseas.

MJ. How do the two shows mesh?

JD. I think they pair well together. They both touch on difficult things, but really at the heart of them is optimism and love and joy and laughter. 

MJ. How is it to perform these shows as a benefit for a nonprofit?

PG. It’s fantastic. Especially for New Beginnings, who very quickly welcomed us into that community of people last year. We inherently understood what they were trying to achieve. That’s what we’re about: You can turn to each other and you can turn to us and we can turn to you. They’ve been a pleasure to work with and I hope that we get to come back for a very long time. 

Jonny & The Baptists performs October 23 and 25, with Every Brilliant Thing on October 24 & 26, at Center Stage Theater. Visit www.sbnbcc.org or https://centerstagetheater.org