Heartbreak and a ‘cool customer’: Didion’s ‘Magical Thinking’ comes to life

The next time you smirk at depictions of ancient people acting out rituals — rain dances performed by Native Americans come to mind — think of how each of us try to will bad fortune away.

Adults aren’t as prone to such colorful rituals as our ancestors or even today’s children — many of whom still chant “Don’t step on a crack, or you’ll break your mother’s back” — but some of us come close.

I certainly did. That realization hit me when I first read Joan Didion’s National Book Award winning book “The Year of Magical Thinking,” which details the sudden death of her husband, the accomplished writer John Gregory Dunne. Didion recounts her richly textured life with Dunne and her overt reactions to his death while detailing her internal struggle to conduct herself just so, thus allowing him to return from the afterlife.

That may sound crazy but as Didion says in the book and play, one day this will happen to you.

It almost did to me just about the time I first read Didion’s book. My husband hasn’t died, but about the same time as the book’s 2005 publication he was diagnosed with a life threatening illness. Despite my bravado, my mind constantly whirled with deals, bargains and penances I could undertake to erase this illness from our lives.

The Studio Theatre now brings Didion’s penetrating work to the local stage. Helen Hedman stars in the emotionally straining one-woman show, which takes Didion through various stages of grief for her husband and for the couple’s only child Quintana, whose fatal illness played out during Dunne’s last days and year after his death.

The play, Didion’s first, was presented on Broadway with Vanessa Redgrave in the title role.

Reviews note Redgrave was, of course, brilliant in the role, which must make this production even more challenging for Hedman who’s alone on the stage for the 90-plus minute production except for a wicker chair and ottoman, Didion’s book, bottled water, and a glass. Hedman not only rises to the challenge but actually seems to transform herself into Didion, whose younger self she resembles. Hedman’s mannerisms and vocal tone will seem hauntingly familiar to those of us who count ourselves among Didion’s legion fans.

The bottom line: This production is pure genius.

And it’s unfair of me to even mention my dismay at the additions to the original story that were added before the story was brought to the stage.

Soon after Didion’s book was published, Quintana died. Didion declined to change the book to reflect that postscript choosing instead to let the story stand as written.

I wish that Didion had made that decision with this script, which loses some of the power Didion originally conveyed upon losing her soul mate and balancing her immense sorrow with her persona, which prompts a hospital worker to classify her as a “cool customer.”

But that might well just be my own magical thinking.