The Night of Magical Play-Going

In her excellent memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes of her shock and grief over husband John Dunne's death from a sudden, massive heart attack during the course of their adult daughter's grave illness.

We had each read the book last year and raved about it to our family and friends. It was a heartfelt, sad, funny, moving, terrific account of the experience of a loved one's death.

We had been intrigued when we heard it was being turned into a stage show with Didion (essayist, author & screenwriter) adapting her own book for her first play. We were delighted to hear that the venerable Vanessa Redgrave would perform the one-woman show. An accomplished and respected writer and one of the greatest living actresses sounded like a fairly sure thing. We headed into the city last night to see The Year of Magical Thinking at the Booth Theatre on 45th Street anticipating a special evening of possibly great theatre.

We got to the theatre early and stood outside watching the people. It was a very New York crowd and appeared more sophisticated than the usual play-going bunch. Inside, there was the excitement of an "event". The last few nights of previews before an opening always have a certain air about them.

The show opens on Thursday. This being a Monday, there were other Broadway actors in the audience. Like us, they were there to check out one of the greats at work. Across the aisle from us were movie actress Amy Irving (Carrie, The Fury, Yentl, Crossing Delancey), stage actor Josh Hamilton (Proof, Hurlyburly, currently in The Coast of Utopia), stage and screen vet Ethan Hawke (Dead Poets Society, Oscar nominated for Training Day; onstage in Hurlyburly and currently The Coast of Utopia) and movie actress Hope Davis (About Schmidt, Proof, The Matador, Infamous). We also spotted Broadway musical actress Celia Keenan-Bolger (Les Miz, Spelling Bee, Summer of 42, Light in the Piazza, Sweeney Todd in DC). This show was already exciting and it hadn't even started yet.

The memoir is called The Year of Magical Thinking because Didion clung to the notion that she could not get rid of her husband's shoes because he would need them when he came back - "Magical Thinking" on her part: "If I keep my husband's shoes, he isn't really dead." She likens such thought to primitive tribes believing that a human sacrifice or some other offering to the gods will somehow change the tribe's fortunes.

Last night, Ed, John and I experienced our own Magical Thinking as we drove home. We will keep our Playbills in much the same way that Didion kept her husband's shoes. Perhaps saving the Playbills will magically rewrite the play that we saw. Maybe it will come back to us in memory as an intense theatre experience of devastatingly truthful writing and raw, engaging talent. Perhaps we will look back at the Playbills years from now and simply recall the show as a unique theatre event, a moving experience of someone's grief. Listen, if the show will be recalled as at least diverting and mildly entertaining, we'll frame the damned things.

Vanessa Redgrave is alone on the stage for 90 intermissionless minutes. She has a Tony for Best Actress and six Oscar nominations with one win. We expected greatness. She was perfectly competent and believable but was strapped with poor material. Didion's memoir was great on the page but did not translate well to the stage. As Didion, Redgrave wasn't particularly sad, crazy, moving or enlightening. She just rambled on with her version of the facts surrounding her husband's death and daughter's illness and subsequent death. The interior monologues of the book didn't translate to the stage. The moments of truth, the nuggets of wisdom, the lessons learned from the sadness weren't there. I was bored out of my mind. I saw Ed check his watch less than an hour into it so I knew it wasn't just me. I was excited twice during the show. Sadly, it was only because I thought the show was ending. Sadder still, I was wrong both times. John was just as disappointed as Ed and I were.

We were unimpressed and uninspired. It wasn't bad in the "what is this garbage?" sense. It was more a case of, "Why do I care? What is interesting about this?" We were not moved until the curtain when we moved quite quickly for the exit.

Of course, celebrity whores that we are, we stuck around to meet Ms. Redgrave after the performance. John had sent flowers backstage (he does love his Brit actresses) and had Redgrave's autobiography and Didion's book in tow. Didion, all 5 feet and 60 pounds of of her, scampered out the stage door after some time but was gone before John could speak to her or get her autograph. Redgrave, looking shorter and more frail than I would have expected, emerged after more than 30 minutes to her 10 waiting fans. She announced that wouldn't sign anything (something about wanting to get rest and having a headache) but greeted everyone individually. She was lovely, polite and quite soft-spoken and posed quickly for pictures with us.

So we now have Magical Photos to go with our Magical Playbills of a show that sadly wasn't magical at all.