As rational and comforting as the five stages of grief identified by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross may be, when it strikes, rationalization goes out the window. We’ve known songs, books, and movies that strive to capture the anguish and despair, but few have come close to Joan Didion’s crystalline prose in her recent memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which chronicled the way her world was upended when her longtime husband and fellow scribe, John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack at home and their daughter fell mysteriously ill. (In the time during which she adapted the book into a one-woman play, their daughter died.) But as she did in her essays on San Salvador decades ago, she again shows us that casting a reporter’s eye on catastrophe helps the spirit prevail. The Lyric Stage (140 Clarendon Street, Boston,
617.585.5680) offers the New England premiere of this touching work. Local thespian Nancy E. Carroll plays Didion. Get tickets ($25 to $50) at www.lyricstage.org or call the box office at 617.585.5678.
