The Year of Magical Thinking, a one-woman play based on Joan Didion's 2005 memoir of the same name, was a hit on Broadway in 2007, directed by David Hare. On Monday, the play was reprised for a farewell performance by the premiere actress of her generation Vanessa Redgrave, who as fate would have it inhabits the role in a most ironic way. Centered on the year when Didion lost both her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and her beloved daughter Quintana, the play could resonate with anyone's loss, but Redgrave was meant to perform it just when her daughter Natasha Richardson died in a freak accident skiing with her sons, and it made last night's benefit for UNICEF at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine even more poignant. Vanessa Redgrave spoke the words of Joan Didion, explaining, magical thinking is when you decide not to throw away the deceased's shoes, as he will need them when he returns. It's a trick of the mind, a cushion if you will, against the full impact of the unbearable. A performance by a string ensemble, young musicians from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, created by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said to promote a dialogue among Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs, preceded the play. At the evening's end, both Redgrave and Didion took bows, each overwhelmed by roses. The audience: Lynn Redgrave, Wallace Shawn, Christine Baranski among those in the cavernous church, as well as another premiere actress of her generation, Meryl Streep, hung back for a while, unable to leave. Stephen Daldry observed of Redgrave, “She is one strong woman.” That goes for Joan Didion too.

Regina Weinreich

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