Reviews of books by David Hasselhoff and Alice Cooper will make it into the May 15 issue of LJ, but Criss Angel seems doomed to blog territory (see “Performing arts celebs spring out this season“). It happens sometimes, to our frustration, that a book doesn’t get reviewed because we don’t have the person for it. As far as Angel’s Mindfreak goes, I just don’t have enough tween boy reviewers.

Based on his popular TV show of the same name, his book is half biography and half how-to for magic tricks. I didn’t get through the introduction: a description of hanging from helicopters by hooks through his flesh isn’t my idea of good Monday morning reading. He writes, “While music [two of my favorite Korn songs, “Right Now” and “Alone I Break,”] pumped from my iPod, I felt so insignificant…The body suspension was as close to an out-of-body experience as I have ever had.” 

This made me think of a galley I recently saw—Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived To Tell My Story by Brian Welch, out from HarperSanFrancisco in July—a book whose audience I don’t predict is similar to that of Mindfreak and may be less easy to pin down. I must confess I was happy to pass this one on to Graham Christian for consideration in our new Spiritual Living column. In an effort for consistency (see the inaugural “Books of a Feather?“) let’s call the link between these two plausible, to use the ratings system of our friends the MythBusters. After all, Angel likes Korn, young boys like both, and both celebs have forthcoming soul-searching memoirs.

It was a balmy springlike evening last night as my friend Amanda and I stood outside the Booth Theater on West 45th Street. We were having a quick chat before going inside to see Vanessa Redgrave perform in The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s new play adapated from her best-selling memoir.

Who should we spot standing next to the theater’s entrance but author Philip Roth in a black suit and a lot taller than I had imagined him to be. And then here came British playwright David Hare (Plenty, Via Dolorosa). He was carrying two notebooks and quickly entered through the stage door. He was the show’s director and, since the show had just started its previews, was obviously going to give Vanessa her notes after the performance.

The play doesn’t open until March 29 but here’s my early preview for those unlucky enough not to have bought tickets to what may be a sold-out limited run. The tall and imposing Ms. Redgrave does not physically resemble the tiny and frail-appearing Ms. Didion, but for almost two hours (without an intermission), the audience sat enraptured and moved as the splendid Redgrave captured Didion’s shock, grief , and denial (”magical thinking”) in the wake of her husband’s sudden death and her only child’s devastating illness.

The play is not an exact transcription of the book as it covers events that occurred after the memoir was published, notably daughter Quintana’s death in August 2005. In a Playbill interview, Didion said she approached the play not as a simple adaptation but as a fresh work, noting that the character Redgrave plays “is speaking from a year and half or two years later. It’s a different perspective.”