The Year of Magical Thinking Tries to Make Art Out of Grief

All of which is quite a lot to hold against the show, and we try our best not to. Roberts, who has a long, remarkable resume in theatre and film, does an excellent job as the strong-willed Didion, who simply cannot accept defeat. The simple and elegant set by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams is a lesson in effective minimalism. And there is, of course, the matter of Didion's writing. Twisting and turning through waves of grief, anger, and refusal to accept reality, Didion's prose, even simplified for the stage, is smart and thoughtful and rummages deep into literature and culture to communicate something that, for anyone who's suffered it, is more or less beyond words.

Of course it's not Didion's fault, either. Anyone in her position would use whatever resources were available to him or her to help a child in distress, and, speaking politically, we doubt she's likely to show up shouting about "death panels" at town hall meetings. But confronted with a play like this, you face the choice of accepting it at face value or looking a bit deeper. You can sympathize with her grief, appreciate the profundity of her insights, or see the whole thing as, at the same time, an exercise in grandiose self-pity. Didion's refuge in literature, which has been praised by a lot of critics, can also be seen as both a defense mechanism and a way to make her own experience more tragic and sublime.

And finally, our interpretation of the play may be colored by another show we saw mid-last month: Leonix Movement Ensemble's Crossing the Bridge. The LA-based company's show, which had two workshop performances at Annex Theatre, wasn't intended as art so much as therapy, an excuse to get the audience to discuss their grief. But the five brilliant Lecoqian actors who performed that show delivered a far more powerful, emotional performance than is possible with Didion's guarded language, and the story was far more mundane and therefore accessible. It was human in all the ways Didion's isn't, direct where hers is purposefully opaque.

As a closing note, we also want to clarify that, not having read Didion's book, our comments are only applicable to the play, which we assume is intended to stand on its own.