90 Minutes of Magical Thinking

Thanks to TDF, I had a cheap ticket to see Vanessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking last night. The one-woman show is, of course, based on Joan Didion’s book of the same title. I haven’t yet read the book. When it first published, I read several great reviews and heard testimonials from friends about how very worth reading it was. I never doubted that it was good; I feared the heartbreak that I thought must be contained in those pages and expected it would be very hard to get through. I knew, as everyone else did, that Didion’s daughter, Quintana, died after the book was published, and I suspected that even if the book ended with glimmer of hope it would be overpowered by my knowledge of Didion’s ongoing personal tragedy.

Essentially, I thought reading the book would be like emotionally vomiting for 200 pages. Ultimately, you may feel better for doing it, but the process wouldn’t be very enjoyable.

So, given these expectations, I thought the stage version would also be emotionally affecting. First the good: Redgrave is a force. She sits alone on a wooden chair on an otherwise bare stage. She has virtually no props. There are no costume changes. She interacts with no other actors. It is just her and Didion’s words, and she delivers and embodies them so beautifully that in an hour and a half I never once looked at my watch or wondered how much longer the show would last.

Unfortunately, that emotional retching I expected never happened. I appreciated Didion’s story, her ability to distance herself from the events enough to analyze them and present them not only honestly but also with admirable humor. I recognized the horror in what she went through, but I never felt particularly moved. This stage adaptation was written after Quintana’s illness played itself out and focuses far more on Didion’s desperation to be a successful mother, one who is able to protect her daughter form harm, than it does on the magical thinking that followed her husband’s death. Yes, in the beginning we hear about her belief that her husband would return, and all the ways she had to make that possible (not getting rid of his shoes, for instance, because he’ll need shoes when he comes back). This material, while not quite discarded, is back-burnered after the first third of the show. Instead we get a chronology of Quintana’s hospital stays and a wonderful description of “the vortex,” the domino effect of tumbling memories that must be avoided if Didion is to remain “one cool customer.”

Perhaps this was Didion’s opportunity to explore what happened to her and her daughter. The book, after all, is centered on her husband, and maybe she needed a venue to tell this second chapter. Or maybe, because magical thinking is all about not fully feeling the weight of what is happening, the emotional heart I expected is simply not to be found. It is, after all, more about coping with loss than with actually losing someone. Maybe the subject matter itself, which I feared for its emotional depth, is exactly what keeps the play from being more powerful.