The Year of Magical Thinking

August 20, 2007 by Dennis Baker 

It has been a year since I moved to New Jersey and I still had not seen a broadway show. That ended last Tuesday. It was the last week for the play, A Year of Magical Thinking, a new play written by Joan Didion based on her celebrated memoir, starring one of the world’s greatest living actresses, the Academy Award and Tony Award winner Vanessa Redgrave. The play is directed by Academy Award and Tony Award nominee David Hare.

Ms. Redgrave relives an almost unfathomably shocking period in Joan Didion’s life. Capturing the compassion, humor and bewilderment of a fiercely intelligent woman whose world lurches suddenly from the ordinary to the unimaginable, The Year of Magical Thinking is a love letter to a child and a tribute to an extraordinary, unconventional marriage, told with raw candor and a brilliant storyteller’s gift for the absurd.

I was able to purchase student tickets that morning. I sat second row, far left. It was great to be so close since it was a one woman show. Ms. Redgrave talked to the audience and being so close there were moments it felt she was talking directly to me. Her blue eyers were piercing. I could imagine how easy it would be as an actor to play opposite her. Being so close I felt like a participant. There was so much depth in her gaze that it drew me in and brought emotion out of me.

We were told that the play was not a good interpretation of the book. As I do want to read the book, I am glad I did not read it before the show. I was able to enter the story innocent waiting to hear what would happen and how it would end. It was magical!

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Filed under: Acting, New York

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