Written by Joan Didion
Directed by David Hare
Synopsis: Vanessa Redgrave relives the unforgettable night in Joan Didion's life when, even as her only child lay in a coma, her husband of 40 years, writer John Gregory Dunne, died suddenly of a massive coronary as they sat down to dinner in their New York apartment. Capturing the compassion, humor, and bewilderment of a fiercely intelligent woman whose world lurches suddenly from the ordinary to the unimaginable.
NEW YORK TIMES:
"The substance is in the silences in “The Year of Magical Thinking,” the arresting yet ultimately frustrating new drama starring Vanessa Redgrave that opened last night at the Booth Theater."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK POST:
"Redgrave and Hare have created a starkly honest theatrical miracle out of Didion's text, which I find admirable yet suspect in its all too rational agony."
Read the whole review HERE.
USA TODAY:
"The play, directed with rigorous elegance by David Hare, is marked by the same lack of sanctimony and sentimentality. Dignity is the word that comes to mind in describing Redgrave's performance and Didion's script. "
Read the whole review HERE.
VARIETY:
"Adapting the book for the stage, Didion has filleted the text into a spare but compelling solo piece. Whether or not it's a play is difficult to judge in David Hare's audaciously austere production, given how inextricably linked the work is to Vanessa Redgrave's riveting interpretation. But regardless of how it's classified, this is unmissable theater."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEWSDAY:
" The answer is Vanessa Redgrave. In an electrifying confluence of formidable females, this magnificent actress has reached her long, lean tentacles into Didion's deep, lean recollections, fastens those pewter eyes on a space beyond the audience and dares us to think that we have ever before heard any of this exquisitely told story. More, she makes it feel unseemly for us to acknowledge that, perhaps, we've even thought any of these mourning words ourselves."
Read the whole review HERE.
NY1 ON STAGE:
" No matter how you feel about this work, attention must be paid. The three talents involved -- author Joan Didion, actress Vanessa Redgrave, and director David Hare -- are in a class by themselves and their attempt to dramatize Didion's best-selling book “The Year of Magical Thinking,” while not a total success, has moments of clarity and brilliance that will stay with you for years to come. "
Read the whole review HERE.
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