The last time I saw “The Year of Magical Thinking” my wife was alive. She chose not to attend that evening, so I went to Hartford TheaterWorks alone to see and review the play.
Now, several years later, it is
over four months since she passed away – “passed away,” what a strange phrase; “away”
to where I often wonder – and I am sitting in orchestra seating at the Westport
Country Playhouse on the opening night of Joan Didion’s play about the death of
her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the subsequent passing of their daughter,
Quintana. Over the next 90 minutes I will see a play totally different than the
one I saw up in Hartford,
not because the words have changed but because I have.
The magical thinking that Didion
refers to in the title is a curious mindset, familiar to those who study
atavistic religions and cultures, which holds that certain actions – the
sacrifice of a maiden, the slaughter of a ram -- will bring about a change: the
rains will come; the plague will depart. In Didion’s case, these actions
include an agreement with herself that if she plays the “game,” arranges for
the funeral, agrees to the autopsy, she is giving her husband enough time to
return to her. If she gets all of the facts right, dates and the times, knows the
names of all the drugs, understands the medical terminology, her daughter will
make it through her illness. If she can just control the situation all will be
well.
The production, subtly directed by
Nicholas Martin, and starring the absolutely mesmerizing Maureen Anderman as
Didion, plays like one of Schubert’s quintets, perhaps his String Quartet in C,
his last composition, for bittersweet themes are introduced early on, played
with, doubled-back on, with variations offered along the way – themes such as
remorse, denial, the aforementioned magical thinking, the need to be “right”
and the need to just let go. Memories are resurrected, then re-resurrected,
only to be turned away from; actions are analyzed from an intellectual point of
view, then analysis is tossed aside and raw emotion spins Didion’s “magical
thinking” off in another direction.
The play is an extended threnody,
and could, at any moment, topple over into a maudlin abyss, but Anderman gives
a wonderfully controlled performance, allowing the audience to sense the
emotions roiling inside her character but never allowing these emotions to
burst forth. Her gestures are precise, her body language evincing a control
that is part of the magical thinking, and yet you sense the powerful, dark
forces lurking beneath, the urge to scream, to rend clothes, to toss a
priceless vase against a wall.
The set, designed by Alexander
Dodge, is spare: a gauzy, curved, pleated curtain upstage, a raked, planked
platform center stage framed by a towering rectangular arch made of rough
lumber, and a single, cushioned Adirondack
chair set stage right on the platform. It is a dreamscape appropriate for
magical thinking, a “nowhere” that allows for desperate flights of fancy
enhanced by Philip Rosenberg’s lighting design, save for some follow spots that
seem a bit uncertain, unsure of exactly how to frame the actress.
In the opening minutes of the play,
Anderman, as Didion, warns that she is going to speak of things that the
audience, in a denial that allows people to go about their quotidian tasks,
doesn’t want to hear about, but she tells the audience members that it will, inevitably,
happen to them. I can’t remember what my reaction was to these words up in
Hartford, but as Anderman spoke them all I could do was nod, for I, too, have
gone through my period of magical thinking, and yes, it will happen to all of
us.
“The Year of Magical Thinking” runs
through June 30. For tickets or more information call 203-227-4177 or go to
www.westportplayhouse.org.
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