For grieving Vanessa, life has imitated art

At the time I was moved, but this week, on the day her daughter Natasha Richardson was pronounced dead, it was the play that struck me: a stage adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion's searing memoir of bereavement. In the book Didion describes the mind-altering grief that gripped her when both husband then daughter died within months.

The seat in front of me was taken by Alan Rickman. I remember thinking - how strange, he must be reminded of acting in Truly Madly Deeply, a film that deals so well with loss. But the more terrible coincidence was to come.

I can think of no crueller example of life imitating art. As Redgrave so convincingly inhabited Didion's pain she cannot have known she was rehearsing for her own strikingly similar tragedy.

In the book, Didion's husband, the writer Gregory Dunne, has a heart attack and slips away in front of her. Then Quintana, their adopted daughter, becomes gravely ill and is cared for by Didion as she lies in a coma. On stage, Redgrave skilfully morphed into the grief-stricken writer, playing Didion with muscular conviction.

To prepare for the part, Redgrave will have pictured the life-support machine, relived the sadness of her own ex-husband dying, tried to imagine the horror of losing a daughter. In this light, the death of Richardson seems linked to Didion's own loss; an aftershock rippling out from the tragedy that exploded her life and spawned the memoir.

The arc of Richardson's life mirrors that of Quintana, too: both born to well-known artistic parents, both blonde, talented, their deaths shocking and inexplicable. The dreadful irony cannot have escaped either mother this week.

Last autumn the audience - older, largely female - wept quietly into their handkerchiefs throughout the play. For them Didion's words, as spoken by Redgrave, had great resonance. As an actress Redgrave will understand the healing power of art - and that Didion has given us all a blueprint for grief.