"Family Vacation Turns Tragic." It's the sort of senseless tragedy the news bombards us with, on any given day. Sometimes it's the children, or the father; this time it was the mother, a young and vital woman, taking what seemed to be a trivial spill on the beginners' slope at a ski resort. But in an hour she complained of a blinding headache, and in three days she was dead.
I hope and pray that those who read this have never had anything like this happen in their families, but we have all known families--in our neighborhoods, in our circles of friends--who have suffered such sudden, horrible losses. In a very real sense, Natasha Richardson was our neighbor. We didn't know her personally, but we knew her face, we knew her voice and manner, better than we know the faces and voices of most of the people on our block. And we also know her family, in exactly the same way: her husband, her mother, her sister, her aunt. Their bewilderment and grief are appallingly easy to imagine, just as if they lived next door. John Donne's admonishment hits home through the centuries: the loss of any soul diminishes all of us.
I saw Natasha Richardson live only once, more than twenty years ago, in the London stage revival of "High Society," Cole Porter's musical version of "The Philadelphia Story." In the role played first by Katharine Hepburn and then by Grace Kelly, Ms. Richardson glowed. She had her mother's luminosity, but with a straightforward charm all her own--a statement that held true throughout her career. Thinking about it now, however, it conjures the unpleasant thought that Grace Kelly, too, died long before her time in a senseless accident...
With Stephen Rea, Trevor Eve and Angela Richards as Ms. Richardson's co-stars, that performance of "High Society" is one of my cherished theatrical memories. I never thought until this moment, however, that it could make me cry.
