Magical Stage Play by Joan Didion

Charles McNulty reviews the adaptation of Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magic Thinking, into a stage play.

It does not seem to be the usual Broadway fare as the retelling of Didion’s grief in the year following the death of her husband has a naked candor:

McNulty records the scene and some of the words from the Didion reenactment by Vanessa Redgrave:

Didion, Hare [producer] and Redgrave have approached their task with a stark Beckettian determination. Stillness rules a set marked by a solitary wooden deck chair and hanging canvases of abstract patterns in muted colors that change with falling dropcloths. Nothing extraneous is allowed to distract from the ensuing trance-like contemplation.

A vision of white and gray, with her hair pulled back to reveal a pair of blue eyes that stare out with an oceanic intensity, Redgrave resembles a mythological figure who has traveled to a place of total darkness and filed a report for our collective enlightenment.

“This happened on December 30, 2003,” she says, naming the date when Didion's husband died of a heart attack while seated in the couple's New York apartment with a second pre-dinner drink. "That may seem a while ago, but it won't when it happens to you. And it will happen to you. The details will be different, but it will happen to you. That's what I'm here to tell you.”

Source: For the entire review see Charles McNulty, Redgrave’s Séance of ‘Magical Thinking, LA Times March 30, 2007.

Image: Vanessa Redgrave

The Year of Magical Thinking

One of the key goals in writing or acting, even about something that is very familiar, is to enable people to feel they are hearing the story for the first time.

In an article for the New York Times, writer Joan Didion presents her reflections on the process of turning her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, into a stage play.

The book and the play focus on the grueling year following the death of Didion’s husband, which occurred before the death of their daughter.

Practices are taking place at the moment in the rehearsal studio on West 42nd Street. David Hare from London is directing this Broadway production. Vanessa Redgrave is playing the part of Joan Didion.

Looking out from the stage Didion says:

“There are 767 seats in the Booth Theater. Those seats either will or will not be filled. It would be hard to say at this moment which prospect alarms me more: either is the nightmare in which you get pushed onstage without a script.”

In chronicling the rehearsal phase Didion identifies one of the more poignant moments:

“One afternoon three months later the three of us first heard the play, alone in the Lion Theater on West 42nd Street, an actress sitting in a chair onstage and reading. As she spoke the first words, I could not breathe.”

Getting nearer to the opening date (at the end of March 2007) Didion shares this cameo:

“Some days I think it’s working and other days I think it’s not. But I remember a February evening when Vanessa went to see the dressing rooms at the Booth. Like a mermaid sensing water, she moved to the stage. She began saying the play. There it was: Vanessa Redgrave was standing on a stage in an empty theater and she was telling me a story I was hearing for the first time.”

Source: Joan Didion, ‘The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic,’ The New York Times, March 4, 2007.

Image: Vanessa Redgrave and Joan Didion.