The Year of Magical Thinking: benefit performance on 26 Oct starring Vanessa Redgrave

Tony Award-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave will reprise her starring role from the 2007 Broadway play The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, at a special benefit performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on Mon 26 Oct 2010.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Vanessa Redgrave relives the unforgettable night in Joan Didion's life when, even as her only child lay in a coma, her husband of 40 years, writer John Gregory Dunne, died suddenly of a massive coronary as they sat down to dinner in their New York apartment.

Capturing the compassion, humor, and bewilderment of a fiercely intelligent woman whose world lurches suddenly from the ordinary to the unimaginable, the play is a love letter to a child and a tribute to an extraordinary, unconventional marriage told with raw candor and a storyteller's gift for the absurd.

"The message of this play is so important to me that I want to make sure that it can be heard by as wide an audience as possible," said Vanessa Redgrave. "This is an experience we all go through, young and old alike. It would be wonderful to see the Cathedral filled with both those whose lives are fully ahead of them, as well as those who know fully what that road is like. The Cathedral is the perfect place for us to share those feelings and this story."

Theatrical director of the 2007 play, David Hare, and playwright Joan Didion, will join Redgrave at the benefit. Special guests Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF, and Karen AbuZayd, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, will introduce the performance.

Funds raised will go to programs run by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to provide support to the children of Gaza and southern Israel.

Tickets range from $40-$150. On the evening of the event, $20 student and senior rush tickets will be available at the box office in the nave of the cathedral for purchase beginning at 7pm