"MAGIC IS believing in yourself. If you can do that, you can make anything happen," wrote Goethe.

TONIGHT, ONE night only, you have your chance to see the fabled British actress Vanessa Redgrave do her greatest as she winds down the months she has played in Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking."

It happens as a benefit for UNICEF (especially for the children of Gaza and southern Israel.) And it takes place in the magical and beautiful Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

Before I tell you of my talk with Vanessa, who was in rehearsal, let me assure you that there are tickets beginning at $40 and going up to Patron and Sponsor seats for $2,500 and a little less.

I asked Vanessa if it is hard to go back and relearn a one-person role after having played it ad infinitum on the Broadway and London stages during 2007 and 2008? Vanessa said simply, "Well, it is a privilege and this is probably the very last time I will ever do it." (The tragic story of Ms. Didion's true life loss of husband and daughter in a short time period is the stuff of legend by now. The book was a bestseller and the play, directed by David Hare, was considered a rare one-person onstage masterpiece.)

I hadn't really spoken to Miss Redgrave since I went backstage after her incredible performance in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" some seasons ago.

We did not get a chance to talk after the loss of her beautiful daughter Natasha Richardson earlier this year, though we exchanged letters. I asked Vanessa last Friday how she was doing.

Vanessa: "Well, I am enjoying the last day of rehearsal for this performance Monday night. I love rehearsal halls and we've been doing this for two weeks. I like being where you can always hear a piano in some other rehearsal hall two steps away. It's reassuring.

"No, I don't know what I might do next. I have just been concentrating on this farewell performance. This is where all my focus has been in America and, no, it is not hard to relearn the words because this play is so powerful.

"I know comparisons are a bit stupid, but it sort of reminds me of doing Ibsen's "Lady From the Sea." This is a play I never lost and could always come back to. Each time you come back to a part you have played, then you are always astonished to think that you ever played it before. It is always new."

I told this very great lady my feelings about her loss of Natasha and what it had meant to everyone in America who loved her. Vanessa said, "Yes, well, thank you. I will never forget the Broadway theaters dimming their lights for her. It was so generous."

Don't miss this event tonight if you're in New York. Call 202-223-3768, e-mail Shannon@friendsunrwa.org or visit www.stjohndivine.org/magicalthinking.html.

AUDIENCES at the Sam Friedman Theatre on the Great White Way are really having a good time these nights, rollicking in nostalgia and harking back to another time with the big three-act play "The Royal Family" by theater geniuses George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber.

As I walked into a busy 47th Street approaching the newly named theater that used to be called the Biltmore, I was delighted by the synchronicity of seeing the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, still functioning just down the block.

These days, we don't often get the chance to sit through three acts and a host of actors onstage. So this remounting of a farcical rendering of the lives of John, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore and their famed forebears is a treat. The first act is a chaotic, clanging, entering and exiting mass of characters who set the stage for life in the raucous Cavendish family of actors, plus their servants, chauffeurs, their manager-agent, all of whom cavort before the busts and portraits of well-known ancestors. (I found this rowdy opening a little unsettling and wondered if I could stick it out!) Still, the set is so magnificent, the costumes so entrancing that I felt the money spent on producing must be justified by what is about to happen.

In the second act, actress Jan Maxwell pulls out all impediments and stops the show with her bravura breakdown where she opts for marrying a rich guy and running away from the "theatuh!" As the family mainstay, "the star Julie Cavendish," Miss Maxwell is a shoo-in for a Tony nomination.

It is always a joy to see Rosemary Harris, a throwback to "grand" actresses of the past. She is the matriarch and sensible center of the play.

I liked Reg Rogers as the bravura Cavendish leading man, fleeing from Hollywood, women and lawsuits. The youngest Cavendish, actress Kelli Barrett, is an arresting and glamorous stage presence and a rare one who projects. My favorite of all is the veteran Tony Roberts, the theater's Mr. Nice Guy, who seems to be keeping it all together.

One tiny caveat. In the third act there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about getting Julie to the theater in time for the curtain. Much talk of "8 o'clock." Actually, in theater of that bygone era, curtains went up at 8:30 all over the English speaking world. (Hence, Noel Coward's play "Tonight at 8:30." This is just a tiny anachronism and I'm being a smart aleck for even mentioning it.)

(E-mail Liz Smith at MES3838@aol.com, or write to her c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.)