" The Year of Magical Thinking " opened on 25 April in London, after a period of good reviews on Broadway. Since we got tickets for opening night had high expectations to see the stage adaptation of the book I read with great pleasure during the summer of 2007. Furthermore, it was great opportunity to appreciate about the expertise of one of my favorite actresses, Vanessa Redgrave . essentially expected a minimal set, one character narrating events and going deep to them again and again with the intent to understand. And so, when it lifted the curtain of the room Lyttelton National Theatre in London, the actress appeared in proscenium, reciting the opening lines, everything was ready for the show revolved around a sentence, that what is to count can happen to anyone, and will happen to anyone.
Curiously, a text originally conceived as a kind of memories, so it fits the scene. And is that Joan Didion , author of Year of magical thinking is more than anything, a very technical writer with broad skills to devise an argument that, despite retain some timeline, there are so eclectic, because there are constant flashbacks, temporal leaps and phrases and images that connected while most of the events described.
Reading the book was not the only motivation for the premiere of the play, was also essential to have the appeal to the Redgrave in the role. Perhaps the dramatization of a text "depressing" as the prudish standards will not be too attractive to some. Perhaps only those who have suffered death unexpected of a loved one can understand the unforeseen events that completely change the life, the familiar, routine, play it safe. Because after the devastating effect it brings to realize how true it is time, not much room for consistent responses. And perhaps the process of understanding and to overcome that loss may take months or years.
Recently, I have only memory to a similar story, the film The Son's Room , Nanni Moretti and now this book play. In both cases, the authors avoid the melodramatic approach to death and turn their stories into stories about the search for explanations exposed while still accepting the loss and learn to continue with the absence of a loved one. Vanessa Redgrave
is known to be an actress from experience, that his presence on stage is inevitable that at some point you're going to stay engrossed watching a very beautiful woman, even at his age. However, all this preamble only prevents this piece as verbal and accurate, one also is admired to see her, in addition to the story, keeps almost constant communication with the public as a way to reassert its dominance of the night.