THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
STUDIO THEATRE - Washington, D.C.
Reviewed by
Verna Kerans
For several years my eldest daughter nagged me - "Have you read The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion?
And to myself I thought, " I won't - it's about death and I am not interested in that - I am too emotional for letting myself in for that" .
Then I returned to Washington D.C and found my friend from college and well-known local actress, Helen Hedman, was appearing in The Year of Magical Thinking) -- and I knew the time had come.
Helen Hedman has just opened her one-woman show: a searing, heartbreaking stage presentation of TYOMT at Studio Theatre under the direction of Serge Seiden and Joy Zinoman. This is the stage presentation of the book that Joan Didion wrote after both her husband, John Gregory Dunne AND her daughter Quintana died. John, in December of 2003, and Quintana in 2004. John, suddenly of a heart attack, and Quintana, after several long protracted visits to the hospital with several seemingly mysterious ailments that cleared up and then returned.
Hedman does a remarkable job of channeling Didion's memoir. She uses as her script all the thoughts from Didion's book in this 90 minute show. Hedman has really captured Didion's spirit : from the short hairdo that looks so much like Didion to the emotion that permeated her life in this Year of Magical Thinking. Didion realizes she has developed "magical thinking". She imagines different conditions that would possibly enable her husband to come back to life. This "magical thinking" works as a survival mechanism for the author who up until now has been a precise and rational woman and writer. What she goes through is a sort of "madness".
Hedman, as Joan Didion, opens her one woman show by telling us that something like this will happen to us - that "something" being an unexpected death. You know it's coming but no matter how you try to prepare - you are never prepared and she warns "And it will happen to you. The details will be different, but it will happen to you. That's what I am here to tell you."
I understand this l only too well. My mother is elderly. Being with her has changed my life these last eight years. I know she will die but I know I will not be ready. It will happen to me.
In her book, Didion reflects on these facts of her husband John and daughter Quintana's life and how she dealt with in in her year of "Magical Thinking". There are a lot of, "if only I had done this or that" . How then it would have all been different. But how fruitless all this thinking becomes as she moves through her year of mourning.
Yes, someday it will happen to you. Possibly by seeing this show you can be a little more prepared.
The Year of Magical Thinking will run at the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. through July 5. I hope you get to see it. Helen Hedman is wonderful. I dare you to watch it without a Kleenex up your sleeve.
Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C.Tickets : 202 - 332 - 3300
