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”.

Annette Kinsella, ElementaryWhatson

What can a seven-year-old do to make his Mum feel better? She’s in hospital after attempting to take her own life, though he doesn’t understand that. But he can see she’s unhappy. So, with the energy and naïve optimism of a child, he tries to cheer her up by making a list of brilliant things – good things like sunshine, or sausages, or your pet dog. The list is random, and compiling it becomes a lifelong obsession. As we see himgrow into adulthood, he keeps adding to it, till, by the end of the play, he has reached a million Brilliant Things.

He, Jon Elves in a stunning one-man performance, can’t do this without help. He gets it from the stage characters in his life, and from the audience in the theatre, who call out little brilliant things that are numbered and which pepper the scriptthroughout. They also improvise too, as various members play his father, his beloved Sam with whom he falls in love, and notably Mrs Patterson, an audience member who in character responds to his school-boy appeal for help as his world turns bewilderingly dark. She is one of the brightest rays of light in this tale of hope triumphing over adversity. Whether the audience member on the night I saw the show was primed before-hand or was a naturally gifted improviser who instantly grew a character of her own in the form of Woof, a sock-puppet who listens to his pain without judgement, I don’t know. I just know it was typical of this play in which the audience cannot help but be fully engaged.

Jon Elves proves himself again to be an absolute master of the stage, here arranged in the round. His rapport with the audience is utterly charming. He is not so much a character as a warm and welcoming host, with stories to tell, and lots of laughs. It would be hard not to leave the theatre without a smile on your lips and a feeling that, in spite of all the suffering in the world, there is much to enjoy, much to appreciate. Little things can sometimes make a big difference.

But little things ultimately cannot ‘cure’ the suicidal impulse if that awful feeling is strong enough, and the play does not shy away from this fact. As full of wonder and joy as the list is, it is arguably of greater impact and appeal to those who are affected by another’s suicide. The real subject of the play is the narrator, who is never named, and who goes through his own dark night of the soul, as I believe is not uncommon among close relatives of people who take their own lives. Ultimately, he emerges, scarred and somewhat bruised, as we all do in one way or another. But wiser, perhaps, and with a sense of integrity that is, for him and us, always at risk when we look too closely at the darkness within.

Nick LeMesurier, Warwickshire World