DUNCAN Macmillan’s 2013 play Every Brilliant Thing, which was written with collaborator Jonny Donahoe, is that rarest of creatures, a successful comedy that speaks powerfully about the subject of depression. The drama is a one-actor play in which our protagonist unfolds their childhood experience of their mother’s chronic depression.

The title, Every Brilliant Thing, refers to the list of reasons for living that our narrator wrote in the hope of lifting their mother’s spirits. This list – which is like a child’s version of the late Ian Dury’s song Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3 – begins, of course, with ice cream and includes such joys as “things with stripes” and “people falling over”.

The play – which is, according to its authors, “based on true and untrue stories” – had its stage premiere, in a co-production by English theatre companies Paines Plough and Pentabus, at the Ludlow Festival in June 2013. It was met with critical acclaim.

Theatre critic Lyn Gardner, writing in The Guardian newspaper, described the play as “heart-wrenching, hilarious… one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see, full stop”.

Such was the success of the production that the play was revived as a TV film in 2016.

Now, some eight years after it first hit the stage, Macmillan and Donohoe’s drama is being given only its second theatre production. The honour of re-staging this acclaimed and important play has been granted to Mull Theatre Company and its recently appointed artistic director Rebecca Atkinson-Lord. Between November 5 and 27, the Hebridean company will be taking the piece on a 15-venue tour around Scotland.

When I speak to her on the line from Mull, the director explains why the piece is perfect for our Covid-stricken times.

“It’s a play about the small, joyful things that make life worth living,” she says.

The drama’s subject matter connects perfectly with both the dreadful emotional consequences of the pandemic and the many ways people have found of coping with it. More than that, Atkinson-Lord continues, the nature of the play, as a small, solo drama, makes it ideal for touring in the Covid-era.

“This is a one-person show. It can tour to village halls, so people don’t have to go outside their normal community bubble,” she says. “It’s nimble to tour. It’s just the perfect show for these times.”

Atkinson-Lord is very proud that, with Macmillan’s blessing, she has been able to reset the piece, both in terms of gender and in relation to the Western Isles. In the original script, and in the initial stage and screen productions, the protagonist is male and English.

In Mull Theatre’s staging, the character will be played by Naomi Stirrat, who hails from Uist. The young actor “gobsmacked” the Mull Theatre team when she auditioned for the role, the director recalls. As well as being an excellent performer, Stirrat, who is from a working class background and speaks Gaelic, fitted the company’s desired profile perfectly.

“Improvisation is built into the script,” Atkinson-Lord says of the play. There is, for example, a moment in which the narrator recalls a conversation with her father, and casts an audience member as her Dad.

Both Macmillan and Donahoe’s play and Mull Theatre’s production are, says the director, “careful with the audience”, in emotional and psychological terms. During the pandemic, most of us, Atkinson-Lord suspects, have suffered some form of depression.

She hopes her staging of this celebrated comedy will bring some gentle solace, as well as joyful entertainment.

Every Brilliant Thing tours Scotland, November 5-27. For further information, visit: comar.co.uk