David Hare was in charge of the staging of the Broadway version of Joan Didion’s National Book Award bestseller from 2005. Vanessa Redgrave played Didion. The play depicts the year after the death of her husband, author John Gregory Dune – at that time, her daughter Quintana was also seriously ill. It is a beautiful, honest and unsentimental attempt to understand the period of time which changed every solid idea she had about death, illness, fortune and misfortune, marriage, children, memory and sorrow. Essentially, she anticipates her husband’s return, and this irrational way of thinking is the magic thinking of the title. Even though the daughter’s health improved during the period described in the novel, she died in 2005. This is not included in the original novel, but it is incorporated in the stage version, thus, the stage version also deals with the loss of the daughter. An unique play about loss.
