I have little to add to the mourning for Natasha Richardson, whom I never had the good fortune to witness onstage. I do recall admiring her fearless performance in The Handmaid's Tale lo these many years ago. Having seen her mother, though, in Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, a show in large part about dealing with the loss of loved ones, I can't help but recall how beautifully and starkly Redgrave embodied someone else's grief, and I can only guess at the terrible enormity of her own and her family's now.
It's perhaps a shallow analogy, but if the Redgrave/Richardsons are English acting royalty, this sudden, untimely death of the clan's golden princess gives one a Di-like shudder.
(photo by Chester Higgins Jr. for the New York Times)
God, I didn't even think about the Didion connection until I read this (though I admit I did think about Neeson playing a widower in "Love, Actually"). Natasha's Tony acceptance speech ("This is for you, Dad. After all, it is a Tony") brought tears to my eyes then. And now. Truly sad on so many levels.
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