Margaret Trudeau, an eye-defying 70, could be found last week in the Lincoln Park living room of her friend (and fellow Canadian) Diane Alexander, the wife of Andrew Alexander, the owner of Second City and also a longstanding theatrical producer. This weekend, Second City is hosting the first performances of Margaret Trudeau’s new one-woman show, a theatrical memoir (penned with the help of Alix Sobler and directed by Kimberly Senior) that will draw from Trudeau’s famous, Vanity Fair-friendly past; a rich life spent, not just in dull, dutiful Ottawa, but before flashbulbs as a glamorous, newly divorced, scantily clad, socialite-slash-actress in the A-list orbit of rockers like Ronnie Wood and Mick Jagger and in excessive, late-night, Gotham partying establishments like Studio 54.
Margaret Trudeau is, in person, exceptionally arresting, an active listener who fixes an intense gaze upon any partner in conversation. Her formidable intellect is immediately obvious, as are her outspokenness, eloquence, vulnerability and personal charm. Words spill rapidly. Some are quips tailored to journalistic needs (“I’m nervous. I’ve never had a director before. Only husbands”), but most of what she has to say is direct and disarming in its sincerity. She speaks with the knowledge and resolution of vast experience of fame; of years spent as a fish out of governmental waters, challenged by the confines of a life with constant security details around (‘you feel that someone is always watching”), and then flapping around the gossip columns, not necessarily by choice. In this moment, you get the sense everything and nothing could upset her; that is not entirely clear.
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