Alma Cuervo, who has appeared on Broadway in Titanic, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Cabaret, Dancing At Lughnasa and many more, brings to life Joan Didion's searing memoir of coping with a life in turmoil. It's moving, funny, absorbing . . . and magical!
“This happened on December 30, 2003. That may seem a while ago but it won’t when it happens to you. And it will happen to you. The details will be different, but it will happen to you. That’s what I’m here to tell you.”
And so the play begins. It could happen to anyone. But in this case it happened to the woman who poet and novelist James Dickey called “the finest prose woman stylist writing in English today.”
Within the course of one year, Joan Didion was forced to confront two tragic losses. Like anyone in that situation, Didion was shocked beyond belief, and belief came slowly. She was sure she could make it all right, if only . . . And The Year of Magical Thinking began. This stunning play, filled with compassion and humor mixed with the sense of loss, will be performed by Northern Stage from January 28-February 15, 2009, within the intimate confines of the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction, VT. Wherever you sit, you’ll be a matter of a few feet from the storyteller, Alma Cuervo, as she weaves her magic spell. And what a storyteller she is! Her Broadway credits include Titanic, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Cabaret and much more—a total of 13 Broadway shows, working with actors from Jayne Meadows, John Lithgow and Treat Williams to Carrie Fisher, Jason Robards and Michael Cerveris . . . even Deborah Gibson and Neil Patrick Harris. Oh, and she graduated from Yale alongside Wendy Wasserstein and Meryl Streep.
The Year of Magical Thinking, directed by Catherine Doherty, runs live on stage Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. (except for Opening Night, Fri., Jan. 30 at 7:00 p.m.) and Sundays (Feb. 1 and 15 at 5:00 p.m., Feb. 8 at 7:30 p.m.), with matinees on Thursday, Feb. 5 at 3:00 p.m. and Saturday, Feb. 14 at 2:00 p.m. For tickets and information, call 802-296-7000. Tickets are also available through the Northern Stage Web site, www.northernstage.org.
The Northern Stage production of The Year of Magical Thinking is sponsored by Terrace Communities.
About the Actress
Alma Cuervo comes to Northern Stage directly from the New York Shakespeare Festival premiere of Steven Sondheim and John Weidman’s musical Road Show, directed by John Doyle. Her Broadway credits include Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Cabaret, Titanic, The Government Inspector, Dancing at Lughnasa, Ghetto, Quilters, Is There Life After High School, Censored Scenes From King Kong, Bedroom Farce and Once in a Lifetime. She played Frau Schneider in the National Tour of Cabaret (directed by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall) and Madame Morrible in Wicked. Other tours include M. Butterfly and the new National Theater production of My Fair Lady. Alma’s extensive work Off-Broadway includes The English Teachers at MMC; Songs on a Shipwrecked Sofa and Christina Alberta’s Father by Polly Pen at the Vineyard; Isn’t it Romantic and Uncommon Woman and Others (for which she received a performance Obie). Regionally, her work has ranged from Eduardo Machado’s Floating Island Plays directed by Oskar Eustis at the Mark Taper Forum to Beyond Therapy at the Old Globe to Camila and Damn Yankees at Walnut Street to The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Barrymore Award for Best Actress) at PTC. She was a regular on Norman Lear’s a.k.a. Pablo and has appeared on the Law and Orders, and recently on All My Children. A frequent narrator of recorded books, Alma was a recipient of a Spencer Cherashore grant and is a graduate of Tulane and the Yale School of Drama.
About the Play
The Year of Magical Thinking started as a prose memoir that begins the day her longtime husband, John Gregory Dunne, died suddenly at home in mid-sentence, while they were dealing with their daughter’s critical illness. Throughout, she chronicles her experiences and reactions in a factual, step-by-step process while periodically expressing the hope that “magical thinking” can somehow undo what has happened. “Anthropologists will talk about magical thinking,” Didion says. “It’s the feeling that you can control events by wishful thinking: ‘The volcano will not erupt if we sacrifice such-and-such.’” For instance, she cannot dispose of her late husband’s shoes, thinking he will need them when he “returns.” Through these responses, she chronicles the stages of grief with power and precision. Her crystal-clear observations are intensely personal but, at the same time, universal.
On March 29, 2007, Didion's adaptation of her book, directed by British playwright David Hare (The Reader, The Hours, Amy’s View) and starring Vanessa Redgrave, opened at the Booth Theatre on Broadway. Planned for a limited run, it closed on Aug. 25 after 144 performances. According to producer Scott Rudin, who suggested the play adaptation, Redgrave was the only actor he and Ms. Didion discussed. Redgrave was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal.
Redgrave reprised her role at London's National Theatre. This production is set to tour the world, with dates already announced in Salzburg, Bath and Cheltenham. The play was also performed in the Sydney Theatre Company's 2008 season, starring outgoing Artistic Director Robyn Nevin and directed by incoming Co-Artistic Director Cate Blanchett (who is taking over along with her husband, playwright Andrew Upton).
About the Author
Joan Didion, born in 1934 in Sacramento, California, is a fifth-generation Californian. She is the author of five novels and eight books of non-fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Vogue, American Scholar, Mademoiselle, National Review, Holiday, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1956, she moved to New York to accept the prestigious Prix de Paris Award from Vogue magazine, where she worked for eight years. She published her first novel, Run River, in 1963 and in the same year married writer John Gregory Dunne. In 1964 the couple returned to California, where they remained for 25 years.
Didion has been hailed as one of the shrewdest observers of America’s political and cultural life. She gained this reputation through the success of her collections of essays, Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979). Since then she has written several novels and collection of essays and has contributed to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.
She won the National Book Award for non-fiction for The Year of Magical Thinking. Her other non-fiction works include Miami (1987), After Henry (1992) and Where I Was From (2003). Fiction includes Play It As It Lays (1970), Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). She also has collaborated with her husband, John Gregory Dunn, on screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park, A Star Is Born, True Confessions and Up Close and Personal. The Year of Magical Thinking, adapted from her memoir of the same name, is her first play. Didion is currently a contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, and she is slated to write an upcoming HBO teleplay about Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham. She lives in New York City. (1992),
About the Director
Catherine Doherty co-directed The Crucible and I Am My Own Wife and has directed Deathtrap, The Elephant Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Doubt, How the Other Half Loves, A Chorus Line, Moon Over Buffalo, Lend Me A Tenor, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change!, Of Mice and Men, Private Lives and the staged reading of An Empty Plate at the Café du Grande Boeuf. She previously directed Stones In His Pockets and I Love You You’re Perfect Now Change! at St. Michael’s Playhouse. Before coming to Northern Stage, Catherine’s credits include co-producing several Off-Broadway productions with Padua Playwrights and random.acts theatre co (of which she is a member). She was the assistant director and production stage manager of the Lincoln Center production of Normal Heart. Catherine has worked with numerous theater companies, including Paper Mill Playhouse (Milburn, NJ), The John F. Kennedy Center and Arena Stage. She is also on the advisory board of the Instant Theatre Company in Highlands, NC. While in Los Angeles, she worked in a variety of capacities with television networks CBS, ABC and Fox. Catherine holds an MFA in Performance from the University of Georgia and an MFA in Film Direction from the American Film Institute. Her short film, Family Portrait, received the prestigious Ida Lupino Award for Outstanding Film Direction from the Director’s Guild of America, and she recently won two Telly Awards for video production at Northern Stage.
About Northern Stage
Since opening at the Briggs Opera House in 1997, Northern Stage has offered over 70 productions, including World Premieres such as The Shrew Tamer, Ovid: Tales of Myth & Magic and A Christmas Carol: The Musical. Other highlights include a staged reading of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Patrick Stewart and Lisa Harrow and a reading of Resurrection Blues, with the playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Miller, in attendance. The company has twice been honored with Moss Hart Awards for Excellence in Theater from the New England Theatre Conference, for productions of To Kill A Mockingbird (1999) and All My Sons (2004), as well as an Addison Award for The Shrew Tamer (2004). The company toured their acclaimed production of I Am My Own Wife to the Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. Northern Stage also collaborated with Dartmouth College on an outdoor production of The “O” Myths, featuring international professionals and Dartmouth students.
Community support has enabled the company to sell over 35,000 tickets in downtown White River Junction each year to enjoy entertaining and thought-provoking professional theater and theater education here at the crossroads of northern New England. They have also reached out to offer residencies and workshops at over a dozen area schools. The company initiated “Project Playwright,” a literacy program for fifth and sixth graders, which has resulted in over 750 original plays written by that age group.
For information or tickets, call 802-296-7000, or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . The Box Office at the Briggs Opera House is open from 5:30-9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 1:00-9:00 p.m. on Saturday and 3:00-7:00 p.m. on Sunday during show weeks; tickets for all shows are available by phone or at the Northern Stage administrative office at 28 Gates Street, White River Junction, Monday-Friday from 10 am.-6 p.m. or via the Northern Stage Web site (www.northernstage.org). MasterCard and VISA are accepted.