REVIEW: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Theatre Royal Bath

11:51am Tuesday 16th September 2008

Listening to a 100 minute monologue about grief sounds a pretty grim way to spend an evening.

But it's not. Vanessa Redgrave delivers a measured, compassionate and powerful performance of American writer Joan Didion's personal memoir of how she dealt with the sudden death of her husband while their only child was in a coma with pneumonia and septic shock.

And then how she struggled with her daughter's repeated relapses every time she appeared to be winning her battle for life.

Ms Didion was a journalist with Life magazine, a playwright and screenwriter with her husband John Gregory Dunne. They wrote the screenplays for films such as The Panic in Needle Park with Al Pacino, True Confessions with Robert De Niro, A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand and Up Close and Personal with Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford.

The intense journalistic search for facts and reasons for her losses, to stave off self-pity, resonate strongly in this script. But along with the clarity and amassed medical detail, is a lyricism and poetry which Miss Redgrave communicates so beautifully.

The opening words immediately engage the audience, when she points out that, although this is about her grief, it is also about theirs.

"You don't want to think it will happen to you, but it will," she says.

There are refrains which pull you back from a diversionary tale. "I love you more than one more day," is the father-to-daughter benison, which echoes through the piece.

Ms Didion traces her journey from denial through little rituals and self-imposed rules, telling herself that if she plays the game John will come back and Quintana, their daughter will be all right.

It is raw, heartbreaking and surprisingly funny as she allows reminiscences of family life to break through the black clouds of despair like sudden rays of sun.

You'll cry, you'll laugh, you will be inspired.