Aplay about depression and suicide hardly seems likely to supply entertainment in a comic vein, but this is exactly what the audience is given in Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing.

Having garnered glowing reviews over the past two years, many of them during a long visit to New York, the Paines Plough and Pentabus Theatre Company production continues on a national tour which, happily, will bring further local dates later in the year.

This could be described as a one-man show, focusing on the talents of its stand-up star Jonny Donahoe, except that this would be to ignore the considerable input of the audience.

In most cases this consists of supplying new items in a lengthening list of ‘every brilliant thing’ with which the seven-year-old protagonist seeks to brighten the life of his suicidally inclined mother. This includes obvious things (ice cream, chocolate, sunlight) but others less so.

The latter group includes “peeing in the sea and nobody knows”, which I only learned of when reading the script following the hour-long show. Audience members are not so clear spoken as actors, especially in an in-the-round seating configuration, as here, which was more audibly favourable to some than others But there was no faulting the work of the spectators called on to play bigger roles, including those of the narrator’s dad, college lecturer and girlfriend. This is the story of a life, or part of one, and we can only wonder how much of it is Macmillan’s.

The list, having been started in mum’s cause, is later resumed for the assistance of its creator who likewise battles with depression. Sound sense is talked about this condition and about much else. There is quite a lot of music, too, not all of it (Ornette Coleman!) very likely to cheer.

Every Brilliant Thing tours to The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, on September 16, the Pegasus Theatre, Oxford, on October 2 and 3, and Chipping Norton Theatre on October 4.