Life changes in the instant
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.
These words open Joan Didion's memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which chronicles the year after her husband, John, dies at home from a massive heart attack while her daughter, Quintana, is in hospital with septic shock (Q. ultimately dies as well). The Belfry Theatre is currently running Didion's stage adaptation of the book, a 90 minute monologue delivered by Seana McKenna.
The play is a lesson in survival and loss, reflections on a terrifying departure from sanity and control. Didion tells a deeply tragic story but also reveals a character so pithy and so human that one can't help but relate. She talks about her refusal to give away her husbands shoes because of his need for them "when he comes back"; she admits that her training in words, research and intellectual thought cannot conquer the void left by overwhelming grief.
McKenna does a brilliant job of portraying a refined, profound and ironically self-deprecating woman; she leaves her audience deep in thought, heartbroken and remarkably uplifted.
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