Stage Adaptation of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking Eyes B'way

Joan Didion is adapting her own bestseller The Year of Magical Thinking for the Broadway stage. The project is eyeing a spring 2007 berth on the Great White Way, according to The New York Times.

Didion, who has written numerous screenplays but never a stage play, wrote The Year of Magical Thinking about a particularly devastating portion of her life. It details her feelings from the death of her husband and longtime collaborator, John Gregory Dunne, from a massive heart attack on December 30, 2003. During that same period, their only child lay unconscious in a hospital after suffering septic shock. She died this August at the age of 39. The title The Year of Magical Thinking comes from Didion's feeling that Dunne's death propelled her into a state of thought she refers to as "magical thinking."

The Year of Magical Thinking was published by Knopf on October 4, 2005. It earned critical kudos and has sold more than 200,000 copies. Producer Scott Rudin who previously worked with Didion and Dunne on films approached Didion about adapting the piece for the stage. It is currently envisioned as a one-woman show, though Didion herself will not star. David Hare is set to direct. The plan is to have a reading of the piece next spring.

"It's almost like a detective story in which the mystery is 'How the hell do I find a way to suffer less?'" Hare told The Times. "But it can't just be about events. It has got to be about one of the great themes, in this case grief and how you deal with unavoidable suffering."