When something has the word Magical in the title, it must have fairy-tale implications, right? This is far from the case in The Year Of Magical Thinking. As playwright Joan Didion explains, magical thinking is a psychological process that helps her get through the hellish experience of losing both husband and daughter within a short period.

You can understand why Robyn Nevin would choose this as her tenure at STC comes to a close. The story should be extraordinary and gut wrenching, allowing an actor to stretch herself and explore the most painful aspects of human experience. Unfortunately, The Year Of Magical Thinking is not quite the ideal vehicle for this.

I’m not sure who said this originally, but it’s a quote I’ve always liked; a good story, particularly a story of this nature, should leave the audience feeling “defrauded into grief”. I felt the fraudulent aspect of this play was unfortunately lacking. Perhaps Didion has spent so much time insulating herself from the deaths of the two most important people in her life that she finds it difficult to stop, even when writing a piece that minutely dissects the events. What comes to the fore, less than a human being experiencing unimaginable pain, is a writer examining the effects of unimaginable pain, building up symbols, toting up divine portents, striving to find the right combination of words.

This unwillingness to confront pain head-on filters into the production. Maybe it was opening night nerves, but I had the impression that Nevin was having difficulty finding a way into the sense of deep loss that the script was supposed to convey. For the first ten minutes or so, her delivery is strangely neutral, her speech constrained by precise rhythms and cadences.

However, once she started moving around the stage her performance became more energised, her delivery freer and more natural. For all the play’s flaws, it is a real credit to both Nevin and director Blanchett that her performance engaged the audience for a full ninety-minute monologue.

The stage design by Alice Babidge is simple and extremely effective. Having Nevin deliver her monologue in a sea of empty chairs really brings home the isolation of the recently bereaved, and not just from having lost lifetime companions. There is the gulf that opens up between someone who’s grieving and those around her, that sense of “there but for the grace of God…” Nick Schlieper’s lighting design is equally sparse and effective, moving from the clinical space of a hospital to the long dark night of the soul with the flick of a switch.

The simplicity is carried through in Giorgio Armani’s costume design, but his plain ensemble didn’t really add anything special to the production, apart from adding a sheen of glamour to the credits.