The Year of Magical Thinking

An insight into someone’s personal journey with grief is exactly that; personal, and those who have travelled a similar path would empathise with Joan Didion’s experience. But her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking failed to reach across all her audience. The one-woman show performed by Robyn Nevin, told a touching story but it lacked depth and failed to draw sincere compassion.

Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane
Queensland Theatre Company & Sydney Theatre Company
Friday, 18 September, 2009

An insight into someone’s personal journey with grief is exactly that; personal, and those who have travelled a similar path would empathise with Joan Didion’s experience. But her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking failed to reach across all her audience. The one-woman show performed by Robyn Nevin, told a touching story but it lacked depth and failed to draw sincere compassion.
 
Joan Didion wrote this screenplay after the death of both her husband and adult daughter within 18-months. She tries to deal with her loss with “magical thinking”. Like a primitive culture that believes if a virgin is sacrificed the rain will return, she believes if she doesn’t throw out her husband’s shoes he might come back. Didion guides the audience through her doubt and her hidden struggle with grief. On the other hand outsiders like her hospital social worker, who delivers the news of her husband’s death, believe her to be “one cool customer”. The strange idiosyncrasies Didion develops during her grief enlighten the audience as to her thinking and behaviour, but was a very two-dimensional view of her emotional journey to accept the loss of her loved ones.
 
Robyn Nevin’s devoted narrative held my attention, and while the story of Didion’s battle was interesting and revealing, I wanted to be drawn further into the story. No genuine emotional connection was built with the character which kept the audience at a distance. The constant references to expensive brand names like Tiffany and Prada, and other snobbish allusions built a pretentious barrier that was hard to break.
 
With a simple set design of rows of chairs, and not much movement from Nevin on stage, director Cate Blanchett’s creation was stripped to the bare essentials of good story-telling. This fit the stark reality of Didion’s story and allowed Nevin’s narration to shine. The bold lighting by Nick Schlieper at times provided instant refreshment from the sometimes drawn out segments of the show. Natasha Anderson used imaginative computer-generated sound to complement the sharp lighting and heighten the drama. The overall vision created a strong platform for the unravelling of events.
 
While Blanchett and Nevin devoted the production as much passion and feeling as possible, the flaws in the show lay in the story itself. At 90 minutes with no interval, some details were repetitive, but mainly the audience needed to be able to connect with her grief.

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Until the 17 October, 2009