Year of Magical Thinking - an honest portrait of a unique mind

Whenever tragedy suddenly hits anyone - especially multiple tragedies - the first thing you wonder is "how will they ever get through it?" Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, impeccably performed for Theatre Kingston by Artistic Director Kim Renders, gives us one very famous, admittedly privileged, and talented woman's response to just such a situation. Not only did writer Didion's longtime life and creative partner suddenly die - but it was at a time when their only child was in a coma, with more health challenges ahead.

Far from being a formulatic, chest-thumping grief purge, the detailed script of The Year of Magical Thinking is a compellingly honest look into the very articulate, not always logical or admirable, but utterly authentic coping strategies that Didion employed to cope with her famous husband's death and her daughter's repeated hospitalizations. It was Magical Thinking - something she wasn't terribly proud of, but which sustained her, all the same. And which she shares with us.

What Didion selects to tell us about the night her husband died - and the hope-fraught time thereafter- is probably closer to an actual survivor's experience than anything you'll ever see on television -or that most people will share with you. Grief, like God, is in the details. Wanting to keep the shoes in the closet. The tone of someone's voice. The way you avoid anything that will send you deeper - until you're ready.

This show, and Render's performance are both unique and thought-provoking. While hearing Didion tell how she "did it" - you're also amazed at how Renders does it - all 90 minutes,without ever dipping into cliche or melodrama. They are telling us a story. A story about the mind. A story about life.

It is also useful information. Don't employ magical thinking to convince yourself that it isn't. As Didion says "when it happens to you - and it will" - it will be good to know that the things you think, and the things you feel do not have to be Hallmark card/grief therapy platitudes. Your own interior resources can actually get you through.

Sit, and listen. It's important information.

Lin Bennett