One of Canada's greatest stage actors, Seana McKenna, is winning rave reviews for her performance in The Year of Magical Thinking at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre.

The one-woman play, based on the bestselling book of the same name by American essayist and novelist Joan Didion, opened Tuesday.

It's about Didion's struggle with grief in the year after the death of her husband, at the same time her daughter lies in hospital in a coma.

Didion is unflinchingly honest about the pain and unhinged thinking of that time, and it takes a powerful performer to express that on stage.

Michael Shamata, artistic director of Victoria's Belfry Theatre, saw Vanessa Redgrave play the part on Broadway and immediately thought of McKenna, he said in an interview with CBC reporter Margo Kelly.

He cast McKenna in the play's Canadian debut in Victoria last October and the production is continuing in Toronto before heading to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in January 2011.

"Seana's magnificent, because I knew she had the bravery required to stand on the stage without any huge amount of support," Shamata said. The one-woman show is performed on a simple stage with only minimal props.

"And the heart, the heart — what we do in the theatre is all about humanity and so you need someone who has that humanity and can empathize."

McKenna, who has acted for 19 seasons at Stratford, calls The Year of Magical Thinking a lesson in survival.

"We can't prepare for death really any more than we can prepare for birth," she said. "It's all an improvisation in the end when it comes down to it. And you don't know how you're going to respond, how you're going to deal with it.

"The first thing Joan Didion says is it's OK if you lose your mind or find a coping strategy, because we're all going to deal with it at one point in our lives."