Vanessa Redgrave, of The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, now on Broadway, is a great actress, but it's a tough show as a woman recounts the aftermath of her husband's death and then her daughter's. She doesn't sink into self-pity at all, but each of us grieves in our own way, and although "Magical Thinking," her attempt to change reality, is a valid one, it's not my way. There is just a bit of wallowing in recollections of the daughter, and, for me, the lack of tangents away from death and illness, make the piece a tad long.
Director David Hare has a good sense of timing and proportion in staging the piece, the lighting by Jean Kalman is just right, and Bob Crowley's set idea of a succession of silk curtains dropped after each major section of the play is brilliant.
The costume Ms. Redgrave wears, designed by Ann Roth, is glaringly wrong: the top is an off-white, and light bounces off it, taking away from the expressive face above it.
Still, I'm glad I saw the very stately Ms. Redgrave once again fill a theater with her magnificent, magnetic presence.
