Synopses & Reviews
"This happened on December 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you..."
In this dramatic adaptation of her award-winning, bestselling memoir (which Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times called "an indelible portrait of loss and grief... a haunting portrait of a four-decade-long marriage," Joan Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play.
The first theatrical production of The Year of Magical Thinking opened at the Booth Theatre on March 29, 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare.
Review
"The stage version emphasizes the everywoman aspect of Ms. Didion's personal anatomy of grief. Like the book, the play is shaped by the harrowing stories of the death in late 2003 of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and of the long, baffling illness of their daughter, Quintana, who died in the summer of 2005.... The dynamic in the book arises from the tension between this impenetrable style and the emotions that war with it, that mock its elegant self-containment. That Ms. Didion never abandons those careful, chiseled sentences paradoxically leads us straight to the feelings beneath them." The New York Times
Synopsis
In this dramatic adaptation of her award-winning, bestselling memoir, Joan Didion transforms the story of the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play.
"This happened on December 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won't when it happens to you . . ."
Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times called the memoir that was the basis for the play, "an indelible portrait of loss and grief . . . a haunting portrait of a four-decade-long marriage.
The first theatrical production of The Year of Magical Thinking opened at the Booth Theatre on March 29, 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare.
About the Author
Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction.