This play is an adaptation of Joan Didion's memoir detailing the year in the life of a woman whose husband dies (seemingly) suddenly one night while they are preparing dinner. While grieving this immense loss, the woman is also enduring the absence of her adult daughter who is lingering in an induced coma. The pain of having to eventually convey the news to her already weakened daughter doubles the Everest that the protagonist must scale.

The depth of emotion inherent in this work is undoubtedly heart-wrenching but its presentation as a ninety minute monologue was simply too tedious to digest. I am not unsympathetic to the rigours that Didion must have battled but I cannot help but feel that her story would have worked better in its original memoir form. There was simply not enough light and shade in the development of that one character to hold my engagement in the theatre medium.

Robyn Nevin was nevertheless superb. Sadly, I have never seen her on stage before, despite an illustrious career with STC as well as other major theatre companies, but I remember her as the austere magistrate in the film, The Castle. She has a beautifully resonant voice with such droll bass that her tone needs not change from drama to comedy; the irony of her delivery works well in both. 

The staging was also very clever with the arrangement of multiple rows of black chairs, like a classroom or a chess board. Nevin moved around the chairs, sometimes sitting or standing, removing or replacing various items of impeccably simple attire (designed by Armani) as her moods and memories shifted. The lighting, which vacillated between spotlights, darkness, dimming or saturation, similarly represented this movement between sanity and madness, control and abandonment.

I liked the way in which the production attempted to demonstrate the capacity that we all share to lapse into the world of the unreal when faced with horror. Perhaps the boredom I experienced was designed to imitate catharsis, and its disconnecting properties. It was an intellectual exercise that I could appreciate, not an artistic triumph that entertained. On the other hand, The Year of Magical Thinking has played to sell-out audiences in New York and London, so maybe I’m the one who is crazy.

The good: Brilliant acting which I’m sure was aided by some very capable direction and clever stagecraft.

The bad: A tedious script despite compelling ideas.

The vibe: Overall, it did not work well as a monologue but there were moments of true insight and searing pain.

Title: The Year of Magical Thinking is currently playing at Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company.

Following its season at The Wharf, The Year of Magical Thinking will tour to the following venues:

Riverside Theatres, Parramatta 28-31 May
Glen Street Theatre, Belrose 4 -15 June
Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong 18-21 June
Canberra Theatre Centre, Canberra 2-5 July
Civic Theatre, Newcastle 16-19 July