Vanessa Redgrave to Star in Stage Version of Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking
By Robert Simonson
26 May 2006
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Vanessa Redgrave
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Vanessa Redgrave will star in the coming stage production of "The Year of Magical Thinking," writer Joan Didion's first-person account of the recent death of her husband, and the decline of her daughter.
The book is being converted into a play, to be produced by Scott Rudin and directed by David Hare. The New York Times reported Redgrave's involvement. According to the article, no other actresses were considered for the part.
Redgrave, who has a lifetime of theatre experience, both in London and New York, most recently appeared on Broadway in Long Day's Journey Into Night. She won a Tony Award for her performance as Mary Tyrone.
The show will open on March 29, 2007, at the Booth Theatre. Didion has not yet finished the script. A workshop of an early version was held this past spring.
The New York Times reported Dec. 6 that Broadway and Hollywood producer Rudin approached noted novelist and essayist Didion with the idea. Hare said he hopes to do a reading of the work next spring, followed by several workshops and a projected Broadway bow in spring 2007.
The piece will be a one-person show.
"The Year of Magical Thinking" was published in October by Knopf, and has since sold 200,000 copies, the Times reported. The book is a searing narration of a trying year in Didion's life, beginning with the heart attack that felled her husband, John Gregory Dunne, on Dec. 30, 2003. Their only child, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, died in August, after the book had been written.
Quintana had been hospitalized with the flu and then fell into septic shock just before Dunne's death. She later died of abdominal infections and other illnesses, the Times said. She was 39 years old.
Didion's books include "Play It as It Lays" and "Slouching Toward Bethlehem." She has also written, in collaboration with Dunne, several screenplays, including "The Panic in Needle Park," "A Star Is Born" and "Up Close and Personal."
Playwright Hare is the author of dozens of plays including Plenty, Skylight, Amy's View, The Blue Room and the one-person show Via Dolorosa, in which he starred.
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