The Year of Magical Thinking

Written by Joan Didion

Starring Robyn Nevin

Directed by Cate Blanchett

Over the course of one brutal year a woman loses her soul-mate suddenly and their only child (a young mother herself) slowly. The woman at the centre of this terrible series of events is Joan Didion. One of the greatest American essayists and novelists of the past 50 years, her writing is marked by a unique combination of the personal and the universal. Able to pare away the clutter of our culture, she is never afraid to draw blood. Even her own.

This material, drawn undilated from Joan Didion's personal life, is delivered by the actor portraying her alone on stage - Robyn Nevin. She lays her heart and soul bare with the surgical precision for which she is renowned.

The Year of Magical Thinking captures the compassion, humour and bewilderment of a fiercely intelligent woman whose world lurches suddenly from the ordinary to the unimaginable. It is a love letter to a child and a tribute to an extrordinary, unconventional marriage, told with raw candour and a brilliant storyteller's gift for the absurd.