The crisp, distinctive voice of Vanessa Redgrave, star of stage and screen, will be heard on the audiobook recording of Blue Nights.

Close followers of Joan Didion’s work will recall that Redgrave was the actress cast to play the role of Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking: The Play when it opened on Broadway in March, 2007.

Then, in 2009, Vanessa Redgrave’s daughter, the actress Natasha Richardson died in a skiing accident in Canada. The tragic circumstances appeared to mirror those presented in Didion’s play, which covered a timeline of greater breadth than The Year of Magical Thinking, the memoir it was based on, and encompassed the fact of the death of Didion’s daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne.

The resemblance of their personal tragedies seemed to give rise to a close friendship between the two women. Didion was reported at the time to have visited Richardson in hospital in New York shortly before she died. She also attended the premiere of Driving Miss Daisy, the first play Redgrave appeared in following Richardson’s death.

And now, Redgrave is to narrate the audiobook version of Blue Nights, Didion’s new memoir which takes Quintana as its principle subject. In it, Didion interrogates her own role in her daughter’s life and death, and attempts to express the emotions felt by a parent grieving for her child.

“The fear is not for what is lost. The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her,” Didion writes.

These words will doubtless take on an even greater charge when spoken by Redgrave.

The audiobook will be released on the 1st of November, 2011, the same day as the print edition, and will retail for $16.50 on Amazon.

Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images North America

Joan Didion attended the opening night of Driving Miss Daisy on Broadway at John Golden Theatre on October 24, 2010 in New York City.

Vanessa Redgrave, known to Didion fans for her role in the theatrical version of The Year of Magical Thinking, plays the title character, Miss Daisy Werthan. She is a Southern Jewish septuagenarian widow who “exudes the sense of someone who has taught herself a specific form of self-control to survive”, as Ben Brantley writes in The New York Times. The play is set in the mid-20th century and tells the story of the evolving relationship between Miss Daisy and her African-American driver, played by James Earl Jones.

Brantley praises Redgrave’s performance, proclaiming that “contrary to popular opinion, giants still walk that tired, old corner of the earth called Broadway.”

In June of this year, Redgrave told BBC interviewer Jenni Murray that she was taking a break from work following the death of her daughter, Natasha Richardson, in a tragic skiing accident. She said that she wished to “take time to think, to read, to garden with my daughter and be with my grandchildren more and, you know, take stock.”

However, only a few weeks later we reported that Redgrave would act in Daisy, a controversial work for which the playwright Alfred Uhry won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. It was made into an Oscar-winning movie the following year.

From left: Susan Sontag, Barbara Epstein, Elizabeth Hardwick and Joan Didion. Photo: Todd Eberle, NY, 1999.

In a blog post on the Times website, Timothy Egan wrote yesterday about those who find success relatively late in life. At one time, he coveted the ‘wunderkind’, the young genius who produces brilliant work early on in their career, like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Vincent van Gogh. But now, perhaps through necessity, he finds inspiration in the late bloomer, “somebody who kicks around in frustration and misdirection for decades before going on a brilliant late-innings streak.”

In politics, Egan points to Ted Kennedy as one who started out as a tempestuous youth, but later became a “master of the Senate”, one who’s “legislative creativity” only increased with age. Hillary Clinton also looks to Egan to be set to follow this route, a better politician and diplomat now than the “policy-making 40-something who had trouble controlling her temper, or getting the results she wanted.”

Similarly, some writers take a little time to get going. “For every J.D. Salinger, who published “The Catcher in the Rye” when he was 32, there is a Mark Twain, who brought out “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” at 49,” Egan writes. Though Ernest Hemingway wrote “The Sun Also Rises” when he was just 27, Norman Maclean only settled down to write his masterpiece, “A River Runs Through It”, when he was 74. These writers would appear to hold with Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece, which claimed that for feats requiring knowledge of craft, and constant experimenting to get it right, age may actually be a benefit.

… [S]ometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it’s just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.

There is still another, even rarer category of writer: the great early genius who later dazzles readers with a glorious second act. Susan Sontag wrote “In America” in 1999; Elisabeth Hardwick’s celebrated biography, “Herman Melville”, was published in 2000. Joan Didion is another such individual: seemingly immune to senescence, her late style bears little resemblance to her early work, and yet continues to impress readers with its intelligence and honesty. As Egan puts it:

Nobody was a better American essayist in the 1970s and 80s than Joan Didion. But the writerly sprint culminating in her late-years memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” was breathtaking. She finished the book just days after her 70th birthday.

Of course, the “second-act ace” can be found in other realms outside literature. Vanessa Redgrave will reportedly star in “Driving Miss Daisy”, the play by Alfred Uhry, this October at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway. This comes just a few weeks after confiding in a radio interview that she wished to take a break from work to enable her to “take time to think, to read, to garden with my daughter and be with my grandchildren more and, you know, take stock.”

But, as every second-act ace must surely know, you don’t get a third.

Vanessa Redgrave, the Academy Award-winning actress, recently gave an interview to BBC Radio 4 in which she spoke about the death of three members of her immediate family in the last year and a half.

In March of last year, Redgrave’s daughter, the actress Natasha Richardson, died following a skiing accident. She was 45. Then, in April of this year, Redgrave’s brother Corin died at age 70. Less than a month later their younger sister Lynn also died aged 67. Both Corin and Lynn were well regarded actors in their own right; indeed, Lynn was nominated for an Academy Award for Georgy Girl and Corin garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play in 1999 for his portrayal of Boss Whalen in Tennessee Williams’s Not About Nightingales.

The death of Natasha came soon after Vanessa Redgrave had played the part of Joan Didion in an adaptation of Didion’s The Year Of Magical Thinking, performing first on Broadway and then at London’s National Theatre.

In the BBC interview with Jenni Murray, she spoke about the similarity between the subject-matter of the play and her own circumstances:

Everybody who came to see that play said they realised we all go through these extraordinary experiences of walking into another country that we never imagined and couldn’t imagine – the country of having lost the member of the family whom we just adore.

It’s a very strange country and it does strange things to your mind but among those strange things is the wonderful thing that you realise how important it is to be very, very grateful for the love you’ve had and all the wonderful things to remember. And things like that don’t end.

She also spoke about how the presence of death had impacted her own mind:

There’s a lot of denial and magical thinking that comes with death but the great thing is that if you are thinking about the children and grand children you’re also thinking a lot more deeply than perhaps you were before. I certainly realised what a gift Natasha was to everyone, certainly to me as her mum. Her boys have a wonderful father and that’s what she would most wish for.

Redgrave went on to explain that she is currently taking a break from work, opting instead to “take time to think, to read, to garden with my daughter and be with my grandchildren more and, you know, take stock.”

Play interview with Vanessa Redgrave and Jenni Murray on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: Vanessa Redgrave Speaks About Personal Loss

Vanessa Redgrave will reprise her starring role from the 2007 Broadway play “The Year of Magical Thinking” at a performance on Monday to benefit programs run by United Nations charities.

The play is based on Joan Didion‘s 2005 memoir chronicling the deaths of her daughter and husband. When Redgrave performs Monday at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, it will be the first time she has played the role since the death of her own daughter, actress Natasha Richardson, in March.

“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,” Redgrave said in a statement. “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.”

Source.

Joan Didion and Vanessa Redgrave

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York has announced new dates for a special charity performance of “The Year of Magical Thinking: The Play” starring Vanessa Redgrave. The date had been set for April, but was delayed due to the unexpected death of Natasha Richardson, Redgrave’s daughter. It will now take place on the 26th of October, 2009, with Joan Didion and (its director) David Hare in attendance. 

Funds raised will go to programs run by UNICEF, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and their partners to help provide much needed help to the children of Gaza and southern Israel.

To book your tickets, and to get more information, click here.

The performance at New York’s Cathedral at St. John the Divine is scheduled for April 27 as a UNICEF benefit. The Tony Award-winning actress’ performance, scripted by Didion and directed by David Hare, won acclaim on Broadway in 2007 and at the National Theatre in London last year.

UPDATE: The new date of the event has been announced. Click here for your tickets!

The actress Natasha Richardson, who died on Wednesday from a brain hemorrhage after a fall on a beginner’s ski slope in Quebec, was not admitted to a hospital until nearly four hours after her accident, according to ambulance dispatch records obtained by the New York Times on Friday.

That is nearly three hours later than the timeline officials at the Mont Tremblant ski resort, about 90 minutes north of Montreal, offered on Tuesday, the day after Ms. Richardson’s fatal fall.

The first paramedics to arrive were turned away after Ms. Richardson declined treatment, ambulance records show, though they reported seeing the 45-year-old actress briefly from a distance. In that instance, they said they saw her sitting on a stretcher — not laughing and walking off her fall, as a resort spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Those discrepancies seemed to introduce new questions about whether Ms. Richardson, who suffered an epidural hematoma — an accumulation of blood between the brain and the skull — after her fall, could have been saved had she been treated faster.

On Thursday evening, the marquee lights on Broadway went dark at 8 p.m., as Ms. Richardson’s grieving husband, Liam Neeson, appeared outside the Booth Theater on West 45th Street to accept condolences from a hushed group of fellow actors including Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker. Ms. Richardson’s well-known acting family — including her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, and sister, Joely Richardson — are arranging for her funeral as they struggle with the shock of her sudden death.

The New York medical examiner ruled Ms. Richardson’s death an accident on Thursday, resulting from blunt trauma to the head. The autopsy results suggested that the fall tore an artery in Ms. Richardson’s head and led to bleeding between her skull and the outer lining of her brain. Ms. Richardson was not wearing a helmet at the time of her ski lesson.

A brain surgeon not involved in her treatment, Dr. David J. Langer, the director of cerebrovascular neurosurgery at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, Beth Israel Medical Center and Long Island College Hospital, said that a clot can develop from the bleeding following such a trauma.

Dr. Langer added that if a patient undergoes surgery — ideally within an hour of the injury — to relieve the pressure, remove the clot and stop the bleeding, the patient can recover.
“It can be quite dramatic,” Dr. Langer said. “It’s one of the most acute neurological emergencies. It’s one of the few times where it’s life or death, where you can truly save somebody’s life, or they die if you don’t get to them.”

In Ms. Richardson’s case, ambulance records showed that she did not receive her first attention from a doctor until 4:20 p.m., at the local hospital, in Ste. Agathe, Quebec, about 25 miles from Mont Tremblant.

Yves Coderre, the director of operations at Ambulances Radisson, which serves the resort under an arrangement with Quebec’s public health care system, said in an interview on Friday morning that his service received its first call at 12:43 p.m. local time on Monday.

That is consistent with the resort’s report that the accident occurred midday. An ambulance arrived at the resort 17 minutes later; but the crew, told that Ms. Richardson did not want medical attention, left soon afterwards.

Mr. Coderre said that Mont Tremblant frequently calls for ambulances after skiers experience minor falls. And just as frequently, he said, the ambulances are turned away.

Officials at Mont Tremblant said Ms. Richardson initially declined to see a doctor on Monday, but was taken by ambulance to the local hospital about an hour later after complaining of a headache to an instructor and ski patrol member who accompanied her to her hotel.

However, the ambulance record shows that it was not dispatched to Ms. Richardson’s hotel room until 3 p.m., Mr. Coderre said. It arrived nine minutes later, and the crew began attending to her. At 3:42 p.m. it left the resort and arrived at the hospital in Ste. Agathe at 4:20 p.m.

Ambulance Radisson did not conduct the transfer to the hospital in Montreal, and it is not clear when Ms. Richardson arrived there on Monday. The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, reported on Friday that she may have arrived as late as 7 p.m.

There is no helicopter or airplane-based ambulance service in the Laurentian hills where Mont Tremblant is situated. According to Mr. Coderre those services are only available in certain regions, like the Arctic north, which lack road access.

Early Tuesday afternoon, about 24 hours after she fell, an ambulance took Ms. Richardson from the Montreal hospital to the airport, and she was flown to New York. She was then taken to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she died the next day.

Questioned about the sequence of events, a spokeswoman for Mont Tremblant said on Thursday that the resort would no longer comment on the accident but would cooperate with any investigation.

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In Quebec, there are several possible channels of investigation into the circumstances surrounding Ms. Richardson’s accident and the medical treatment she received.

Marie-Eve Bédard, a spokeswoman for the minister of health and social services, said that Ms. Richardson’s family could ask the commissioners at either hospital that treated her to review the case. If the family is not satisfied, or if they believe that there were significant medical errors, it can then file a misconduct complaint with the province’s medical licensing body .

As for legal action against the Mont Tremblant resort, the provincial coroner’s office can order a staff investigation or hold a public inquiry. Although the coroner’s office could not be reached for comment, a spokeswoman for the minister of public security, whose office oversees the coroner, said Thursday that she was not aware of any such action.

The Montreal Gazette reports that Richardson suffered a traumatic brain injury while skiing in Canada. She was walking around for an hour after the accident, says a Mont Tremblant ski resort spokesperson. She was not wearing a ski helmet on a private ski lesson on a beginners’ run. She fell and tumbled down a hill. Her two sons, Michael, 13 and Daniel, 12 were skiing with her at the time. There were no external injuries. After returning to her hotel room, she experienced headaches and was transported to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien, and later to intensive care at Sacre Coeur Hospital.

Over night, she was moved to the Lenox Hill hospital in New York, to allow relatives and close friends to say goodbye. Richardson had suffered an epidural hematoma. Click here to find out more about this medical condition. Silver screen legend Meryl Streep and author Joan Didion quietly dropped by Richardson’s hospital room to pay their final respects, according to the New York Post on Thursday 19th.

Vanessa Redgrave arrives at New York hospital "Lennox Hill" to visit her daughter on Tuesday, March 17th.

Natasha was the daughter of director Tony Richardson, who was married to Vanessa Redgrave for five years in the 1960′s. Tony, a close friend of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, died of complications from AIDS in 1991. In 1990, Natasha Richardson married her former husband, the producer Robert Fox, in a ceremony performed in Joan Didion’s New York apartment. According to the New York Times, it took place in the living room and afterward “there was a lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant, where everyone was treated to an impromptu duet of “Edelweiss” by Ms. Redgrave and the actor Rupert Everett.” Vanessa Redgrave played the character Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking: The Play on the Broadway Stage in August 2007, which was directed by David Hare.

Joan Didion; New York apartment

“Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha,” said a statement from the family. “They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”

To read the New York Times obituary, click here.

To see a slideshow of Natasha Richardson’s career, click here.