By Harry Haun
30 Mar 2007

Does she dread going on? "Years ago, I would have. I do not want to go on for her. She's so compelling and brilliant. But what I feel is, down the line, I can do it. I'll have it in me, and the piece is so extraordinary. I don't want to go on for Vanessa, but they need to have somebody there, and I'm very flattered and honored to be the one they think can do that."

Rudin was radiant with what he hath wrought. "When I read the book," he said, "it just cried out to me for it to be a play. It was totally obvious in my mind. It needed a voice. Once we knew we were going to do it, we only talked about Vanessa. Hers was the first name that was brought up — I think it was brought up by Joan — and it was then the only name we ever considered. It was sorta, 'Oh, yeah, of course, that's who it should be.'"

Technically, and quite fleetingly, Rudin said, Redgrave was the second choice for the role. "Joan and I had a conversation for a second about her playing herself, but I never thought she'd be able to do it, or would do it. It was a kind of Spalding Gray fantasy..."

Didion's memory of the role offer is even hazier: "He says he asked me, but I think, if he did, I was so appalled that I have no memory of it. Vanessa called me to say she'd read the book. We talked about that for a while, and I mentioned that to Scott and David the next time we met. That's when it came out that's who we all had in mind for the part."

Dunne and Didion had a long relationship with Rudin, although only one of their scripts saw the light of screen (1996's "Up Close & Personal," a Jessica Savage-like rise-and-fall yarn with Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford). "We worked on a few other things and then some needed rewrites," the producer recalled. "They helped me out on numerous movies over the years." So he had qualms about pitching the book-into-play idea to Didion.

"I was sorta doubtful at first," Didion confessed, "but we started talking about it, and I decided to do it. I think I started in January of last year, and we had a draft to do a workshop in April. I reconceived it as a play. Obviously, if you look at something a year and a half or two years later, you have a different perspective." And, too, the play gave her an opportunity to deal with the death of her daughter. Throughout the evening — during the party, at the theatre and for the curtain call — Didion wore an orchid lei — a sentimental nod to her past family life in Honolulu where the three Dunnes spent many happy hours.

Deuce, which starts previewing April 11 at the Music Box right across the street from Magical Thinking, had the heaviest turnout of Rudin associates at the party — Seldes, author Terrence McNally (cheered by the news that his Some Men, which opened earlier this week, will be sticking around for extra innings at Second Stage), director Michael Blakemore (singing the praises of Angela Lansbury and Seldes: "They're great pros, great to work with — and fun as well. You can say anything to them") and general manager Stuart Thompson, who does ditto for Magical Thinking.

Stockard Channing, the third lead in "Up Close & Personal," said she was "doing a movie in town called 'Multiple Sarcasms.'" Also: "I have a film I made in England that will be out in September called 'Sparkle.'" Her next stage work will likely be in London, too. "I might be going to do a play at the Almeida this summer, but I can't say what because they haven't got the rights yet." She hooked up with her old Hapgood director, Jack O'Brien, who's between trilogies right now (The Coast of Utopia at the Vivian Beaumont and Il Trittico at the Metropolitan Opera). The two wound down after Magical Thinking at Angus MacIndoe's. The play couldn't have been an easy sit for Channing: Her mother just passed away.

In from London, director Stephen Daldry let me ask my Billy Elliot question. Which is, "When?" This time he said with some degree of confidence: "October '08 at the Imperial."

Daldry did the Rudin-produced, Hare-scripted vehicle that won Nicole Kidman an Oscar: "The Hours" — and in the autumn he'll be working with those gentlemen again, filming "The Reader" by a German judge named Bernard Schlink. "It came out about six or seven years ago," said Hare. "It's about 'How do you live in postwar Germany?' — about how difficult it was for the generation after the war to live in Germany — about German guilt."

Another Brit, Simon Jones, said he has a play called Phallacy up for a run at the Cherry Lane Theatre (May 18-June 10). The newly turned playwright, Carl Djerassy, is best known for having invented the birth-control pill. "I shall be the chemistry professor, and my friend Lisa Harrow will be the art historian," said Simon. "We last worked together 29 years ago at the RSC in that famous production they did there of Wild Oats."

About the same time, also Off-Broadway, the ever-employed Brian Murray will hit Angel Street at the Irish Rep. David Staller will be the husband, and Laura O'Deah will be the rich wife he's "gaslighting." (Yep, Patrick Hamilton's vintage mystery was made into two movies called "Gaslight," one of them starring an Oscar-winning Ingrid Bergman.)

"I'm playing the detective," said Murray. "It's a real workhorse part for me. This character speaks and speaks and speaks and speaks. It'll open around the middle of May."

A Spanish Play having closed, Linda Emond is opening an old window: "I'm doing additional filming on a film I did in Texas, called 'Stop Loss,' for Kimberly Peirce [who directed Hilary Swank to an Oscar for "Boys Don't Cry"]. I play Ryan Phillippe's mom."

Mamie Gummer, who also has a role in "Stop Loss," was among the young actors who turned out for Redgrave's master class at the Booth. Tony winner Jane Krakowski and Oscar winner Marisa Tomei were in that number, as were Claire Danes, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dana Delaney, Jenna Elfman and Anna Deavere Smith.

Mike Wallace, in trenchcoat at the party, was there just as a friend ("She's a dear friend of mine — I mean 20 or 30 years."). There were a lot of friends: Bill Nighy, Pierce Brosnan, Mia Farrow, Joan Rivers, producers Daryl Roth, David Stone and Roger Berlind, Karen Akers directors George C. Wolfe, Wes Anderson and Nora Ephron, playwright/Rudin screenwriter Paul Rudnick and TCM host Robert Osborne.

John Gregory Dunne's brother, novelist Dominick Dunne, arrived with his son, actor Griffin Dunne. Also present: Darren Starr, who created "Sex and the City," and one of his creations, Cynthia Nixon. The Culture Project's artistic director, Aaron Buchman, came with playwright Eve Ensler. A decade after The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Celia Weston and Arija Bareikis are keeping up their mother-daughter act. Christine Baranski was with longtime hubby, actor Matthew Cowles ("Can you believe we've been on stage together only two times in all these years and both times it was Ibsen?")

The biggest stars of the evening arrived like stars, very last-minute. Rosie O'Donnell thundered into the theatre, then reversed engines and returned to the barricades outside the Booth to embrace some screaming fans. Another commotion was caused by the last arrival, Jane Fonda, honoring a friendship of 30 years and the actress she named her own daughter after. Fonda was an Oscar-nominated Lillian Hellman to Redgrave's Oscar-winning "Julia" in the 1977 film that may well be the best of both.

The Year of Magic Thinking is an identifiable, universal experience, lived and written by one woman and performed by another — but, as the latter aptly observed in a recent CBS interview: "I won't be alone even though I'll be standing alone on the stage — because, hopefully, there will be a lot of human beings sitting there and sharing this experience with me."