End of brilliance ‘Every Brilliant Thing,’ a crowdpleaser about clinical depression, dazzled, enlightened in shortened run at TheaterWorks

Walking into TheaterWorks on Sunday afternoon for the final performance of “Every Brilliant Thing” had the illicit air of visiting a speakeasy during prohibition. Instead of bootleg hooch, however, the alcohol came in the form of hand sanitizer. Instead of wild partying, audience members sat apart.

Nobody milled about the lobby. The theater bar was closed. Fewer than 60 people populated the 200-seat auditorium. It was a sobering experience.

The theatergoing tide had finally turned. “Every Brilliant Thing” had opened earlier in the week, its seating capacity purposefully diminished to 100 following guidelines from the CDC and local government. In the span of a few performances, says TheaterWorks’ producing artistic director Rob Ruggiero, the theater went from easily filling those 100 seats to facing the inevitable.

The show cut its run short just as the state was ordering all theaters to cancel most large social gatherings altogether.

The loss of “Every Brilliant Thing,” not to mention so many other shows that would otherwise be happening in Connecticut this season, is heightened by the humanity, warmth and importance of this unassuming one-man play.

“Every Brilliant Thing” is about getting through hard times. It’s about reaching out. It talks of families that can’t communicate, of tentative romances, of closeness, of support groups.

This was not theater that could be convincingly replicated by recording or broadcasting it (though a New York production was indeed filmed for HBO). This disarmingly low-key one-person play, written by British playwright Duncan Macmillan (“1984”) with contributions from its original performer

Jonny Donahoe, uses the power of live performance to the utmost, without availing itself of any spectacle or special effects greater than piped-in music. It uses the energy in the room to propel a tender story of one man’s struggle to know himself.

Even before audiences shrank, the TheaterWorks