The Year of Magical Thinking, NT Lyttelton, London<br />The City, Royal Court Downstairs, London<br />Tinderbox, The Bush Theatre, London

Vanessa Redgrave is admirable in Joan Didion's monologue on loss and grief but the venue is too impersonal to touch the heart

Speaking ill of the dead is taboo. Criticising someone who's talking about bereavement surely is as well, which makes reviewing The Year of Magical Thinking uncomfortable. This is a monologue by the American writer Joan Didion, performed by Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare (as it was on Broadway in 2007). It is based on Didion's memoir of the same title which, stateside, has become a popular "handbook" to mourning.

Didion is, no doubt valuably, airing how painful the process of grieving is and what obsessive games it plays with the mind. The piece describes how the author could not accept her husband John Gregory Dunne's death from a heart attack. Her distress was compounded by their daughter being in a coma – partially recovering but then fatally relapsing.

Didion's account is pin-sharp as it homes in on specific painful memories. She vividly recalls how her husband slumped over the supper table, in mid-conversation, and she thought he was joking. Hours later, she came home from the hospital alone, widowed, to find a pool of his blood and the ambulance crew's empty syringes still strewn on the floor. What was really ghastly, she says, was waking the next morning and he still wasn't back.

She repeatedly emphasises how she tried to stay rationally in control, yet found herself superstitiously believing that if, say, she kept his shoes, he would return. With her daughter in intensive care in California, driving by all the places associated with happier memories became harrowing too.

This is revealing or, indeed, instantly recognisable for anyone who has struggled to cope with medical crises and loss. Didion is at her most moving when wondering if she failed as a mother, having promised to keep her child safe.

Much of the time, though, this production peculiarly does not touch the heart. Why is this? Redgrave's performance is admirable, dignified and focused. However, the Lyttelton is just too large for such an intimate solo turn. Moreover, either due to the acoustics or her American accent, Redgrave's words often get swallowed when she speaks rapidly. Perhaps straining to hear, in turn, increases a sense of cultural distance. The references, to various West Coast retail outlets and also hospitals in Manhattan, remain remote as you endlessly gaze at Redgrave in a chair in front of abstract grey backdrops.

Didion has not written for the stage before, and Hare's abrupt changes in pace and mood – as if dealing with movements in a piece of music – feel obtrusive. I was not persuaded that the piece was so strongly structured. The fact that Redgrave, near the end, suddenly pulls out Didion's book and reads from it – besides looking regrettably like product placement – confirms that the author hasn't fully grasped the nature of theatre.

As for her decision to address the audience directly – repeatedly telling us that we will be bereaved too sometime, though the details will be different – well, we're not dumb. We know that! Of course, some subjects should be aired more, but this emphatic spelling out is needlessly condescending.

You get the creepy feeling that somebody has died – or will do soon – but you're never quite sure in Martin Crimp's darkly surreal, weirdly gripping new domestic drama, The City. Staged by Katie Mitchell, this series of fragmentary snapshots starts with a deceptively routine question. "How was your day?" asks Benedict Cumberbatch's Chris, wearily, back from work in his suit and tie. "My day was fine. Only ..." replies his hesitating partner, Hattie Morahan's Clair.

She proceeds to describe what sounds like – but wasn't? – the kidnap of a child at Waterloo Station by a nurse. Clair then says that the girl's father – who asked her what she had seen – turned out to be a torture victim and acclaimed author called Mohamed, and they had an enthralling heart-to-heart about his life in a café.

Chris, for his part, appears oddly distracted, repeating how he couldn't gain access to his office building. His job may well be axed. Their whole conversation is alarmingly tense and veined with jealousy. The action then jumps and they are in the garden, staring at a woman (Amanda Hale) who introduces herself as a neighbour. She's in a nurse's uniform and is scarily crazy, talking about terrorists in drains and suggesting that Clair and Chris might think of locking up their noisy children. She lies down on the grass in slow motion. Another jump cut and Chris is sitting with his little girl. She's wearing a miniature nurse's uniform, waiting for Mummy to come home. There's blood – pretend or not? – in her pocket.

This is a vision of a marriage, and maybe a whole world, in breakdown. People's identities overlap in a way that's peculiarly dream-like, and Mitchell's production captures the quality of nightmares: mad things happening with an aura of normality. In a less taut production, Crimp's writing might seem pretentious but he taps into a deep, clammy sense of unease.

Finally, to the Bush where artistic director Josie Rourke has fought a valiant battle and won: saving this important new-writing theatre from the Arts Council chop. Alas, what a let down now. Rourke's premiere of Tinderbox by Lucy Kirkwood (who contributes to Channel 4's Skins) is a woefully feeble black comedy, set in a butcher's shop. This is some kind of garbled futuristic allegory. Swathes of the country are under water and meat is so scarce that the xenophobic old Cockney shopkeeper – who is called Saul and is a mini-dictator – is turning passing strangers into stewing steak.

It's Sweeney Todd rehashed and embarrassingly immature. Jamie Foreman's greasy Saul is about as frightening as a ham sandwich. Thank heavens for Bryan Dick's verve as his Scots apprentice, and Sheridan Smith's comic genius as his sluttish wife. She's the sparkiest mock-dumb blonde in the business.

Still, the only dramatic mystery is why Rourke didn't spare us all and put this script through the mincer. Just offal.

'The Year of Magical Thinking' (020 7452 3000) to 15 July; 'The City' (020 7565 5000) to 24 April; 'Tinderbox' (020 7610 4224) to 24 May