There's a considerable amount of magic in the Rep's Studio Theatre these days, led by Fontaine Syer. The co-founder and long-time artistic director of the Theatre Project Company returned to a St. Louis stage and offers a brilliant re-creation of Joan Didion in "The Year of Magical Thinking," which will run through Jan. 30.
Didion's Pulitzer Prize-winning book deals with her response to the sudden death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, who collapsed and died at their dinner table on Nov. 30, 2003. At the time, they had returned from a hospital visit to their only child, Quintana, critically ill and suffering from septic shock. A few months later, after an apparent recovery, she was felled by a brain hematoma, and died, in the summer of 2005, from acute pancreatitis.
The book, written in an amazing 88 days, was published before the death of Quintana, and when Didion adapted it into a one-woman play, she added a discussion of the death of her daughter. Despite Syer's splendid performance, this addition undermines the play's strength. As Quintana's story emerges, it weakens that of John, and one wonders which person was the more important to the writer.
Didion's opening grabs the audience with its power, shrouded in simplicity.
"This happened on November 30, 2003," she writes. "That may seem a while ago, but it won't when it happens to you. And it will happen to you." Syer delivers as simply as it sounds, but the words are a left hook to the heart, and one does not recover.
The "magical thinking" of the title is Didion's way of describing her use of denial, and of the offering of a sacrifice as if that will bring his return. "If I finish my cereal, he'll be back," she more-or-less says to herself, using her behavior as the general idea for a sacrifice or bargain to create this miracle, as children do for many errors of commission or omission. It may be "if I shine my shoes," or, "if I sit very still." It's a game we've all played. None of us ever won.
Didion tells us very little about herself and Dunne in terms of meeting, courtship, early lives together. It's mostly about her; her thoughts, her actions, her responses; her living in Hawaii, in Malibu, in New York. But she does write of arguments. "Why do you always have to be right?" she quotes him as saying, then adding, "Why do you always have to have the last word?" When she writes of her daughter, there is more of Quintana.
Listening to her deal with hospitals, doctors, administrators makes his questions seem reasonable.
Syer has total command of Didion's persona, though she is a larger woman than the 5-foot-2, 95-pound one she portrays. She's immediately recognizable, the same fine features and attractive style. I had not seen her since 2002, when we ran into one another at a Philadelphia theater production during a conference of the American Theatre Critics Association that I was attending. At the time, she was artistic director of the Delaware State Theater, a post she left a few years later. She's at Indiana University today, teaching acting and directing, and this production ran in Indiananpolis in the spring of 2009. Priscilla Lindsay directed then, and reprises it here. Rob Koharchik designed the simple set, his twin brother, Ryan, the lights.
The New York production, directed by David Hare and starring Vanessa Redgrave, ran for five months in the spring and summer of 2007.
It's a strong role, and Syer performs it excellently. It's a pleasure to have her back on a St. Louis stage. If only the play were better. . . .
The Year of Magical Thinking is on stage at the Studio Theatre of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, through Jan. 30
—Joe
Comments
2 responses
To me it is more like the emperor’s new clothes. I marveled at the ability to digest and present all that monologue — but I saw little of the point. It seemed like the author found in herself some strange awakenings of self-knowledge and uncomfortable self-deception, and thought them very unusual and worthy of sharing. To most of us bereft of the ability to immerse ourselves in such obvious wealth and privilege (it can be done with a median American lifestyle too, which is equally out of reach of so many of us), self-discovery and inner life are daily feedings, not such seldom accidents. The play was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. The emperor is truly naked.
JJ
Nothing against The Rep and certainly nothing against the fine talents of Fontaine Syer but the play was disappointing. What was the message? That the super rich deal with death and dying too? I could have told you that in way less than an hour and a half.