It’s all in the design with Alex Berry
Had you ever heard of Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins…? No, neither had we until it became the t-shirt of choice for Andy Turner in Every Brilliant Thing!
Keeping with the theme of beautiful music that features in the show thanks to Andy’s dad’s love of records, this was the niche jazz band that caught the eye of Alex Berry (designer) and Andy (actor) and resulted in the purchase of 5 t-shirts for the show… Was this record sales for this niche jazz cover t-shirt design, we wonder?
Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins is a compilation album by jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk and saxophonist Sonny Rollins released in 1956 by Prestige Records. The tracks on it were recorded in three sessions between 1953 and 1954.
Alex is a big Sonny Rollins fan and saw him play in Amsterdam when he was in his 70s!! Sonny’s version of ‘Sunny Side of the Street’ is one of Alex’s absolute favourites. Miles Davis’s ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’ is a good ‘un too, according to Alex. Alex told us a bit more about the time she saw Sonny… “I was studying over in The Hague at the time. The gig was sold out, so I never thought I’d get to see it, then just over an hour before it was due to start, my friend called me to say she had a spare ticket, but I had to get my bum to Amsterdam. I have never cycled so fast in my life…?”
Alex then shared how this became their t-shirt of choice: “The idea behind the t-shirt is that the narrator is a bit of a music geek so we decided we wanted an album t-shirt to reflect his love of music, but we didn’t want something widely recognisable enough that it would be distracting during the show. An album t-shirt is like an invitation to chat, though, and there was always the thought that it could be fun if, in one of the performances, someone did recognise it and wanted to have a chat with Andy about it.”
More Fun Facts: The yellow socks are also a nod to the list in the play: #4 The colour yellow. As are the Adidas trainers: #5 Things with stripes.
Alex designed the whole show of Every Brilliant Thing, from the neon writing and the orange curtain through to the exhibition in the building, allowing our audiences to write on the walls and finally to the outfit Andy wore.
Alex’s ‘Brilliant Thing’ exhibition will be open to the public until September 5*. Feel free to pop in, write on our walls, add words to our giant magnet board, listen to records and listen to our audio installation of people’s brilliant things.
Credit: Interviewed by Rachel Kearns from Theatre by the Lake (*updated in 2026)
