By Patrick McDonald
Special to ShowBiz Chicago
CHICAGO – Death, in all its finality for the person who expires, is actually a survivor’s story. It is for those who are still here to make sense of it, to put the finishing perspective upon the life that has been extinguished. And it was within the shocking suddenness of an unexpected demise that author Joan Didion wrote about her survivor’s experience on death and dying, in her 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning memoir The Year of Magical Thinking.
In 2007, a stage version was adapted by Ms. Didion and opened on Broadway. It is a straight forward retelling of the events that comprise the book, performed by a single actress representing the author. Chicago’s Court Theater opened its version last month, magnificently rendered on their stage by Mary Beth Fisher and directed by Charles Newell.
The Year of Magical Thinking actually covers a period of time between late 2003 to the summer of 2005. Joan Didion’s daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, laid in a coma with septic shock in a New York City hospital on December 30th, 2003. Didion’s husband and Quintana’s father, the prominent author and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, has just come back from that hospital with Didion and they sit down to dinner in their apartment.
After offering him a drink, Didion described Dunne as sitting by a fire, reading a manuscript for review, wondering if the scotch he was drinking was single malt. And then there was silence. Didion recalled that she thought he slumped in his chair to tease her, play acting as everyone has performed on occasion. The rest was a blur of paramedics and a rush to the emergency room. John Dunne was pronounced dead on arrival of a massive coronary one hour later.
“Magical thinking” refers to the thought process in which Didion faced his death and the methodical steps in caring for her ill daughter in the midst of that specter. The phases of her mourning are brought to light by Ms. Fisher, steeped as they are in the cold professional atmosphere of hospitals, attending on-call doctors and drug therapies that cost $20,000 dollars. “It will happen to you,” Fisher as Didion warns the audience as she begins the narrative, and the journey bears reasonable similarities to the eventuality of that aphorism.
Fisher relates the events from a rectangular riser in the middle of Court Theatre’s elegant black box ambiance. Her set consists of a simple white desk and chair, appointed with flowers and a single coffee cup. She is dressed simply, using a scarf that is artfully draped on her, to emphasize certain points in the storytelling, tying and untying the garment to relieve nervous energy. She uses the spare stage gracefully, moving like n ballerina in a cage at times, creating the time and space to illustrate certain junctures in Didion’s magical undertakings.
Special mention must also go to the lighting design (Jennifer Tipton) and sound design (Andre Pluess). As Fisher relates Didion’s specific magical thinking, the lighting is altered to take on an otherworldly, smoky quality. When the spare music or sound effects were necessary, they punctuated rather than distracted.
Mary Beth Fisher’s approach is gentle, bringing an emotion and a smile to Didion’s sometimes academic prose. There is a line in the show that speaks to how matter-of-fact a tragic event can be retold, that people often focus on ordinary circumstances surrounding the awful circumstance – the clear blue spy in September as a plane heads toward a building, for example. Fisher as Didion relates several of those background ironies plainly and beautifully, giving them a salve-like quality against the crushing pain of loss.
It will happen to you. But somehow through the inspiration of Joan Didion and the incredible performance of Mary Beth Fisher, in addition to your own magical thinking, you will get through it as well.
“The Year of Magical thinking” finishes its run February 14th at the Court Theatre, Chicago, visit www.courttheatre.org for show times and details.
