QUICK TAKES - April 4, 2009

Theater to the Redgraves is what politics is to the Kennedys: family business, family birthright, family shelter. That’s why Lynn Redgrave said she was going ahead with opening her one-woman play, “Rachel and Juliet,” in Washington Friday, while still grieving over the March 18 death of her niece, Natasha Richardson.

“Natasha would have been appalled if I didn’t do this,” Redgrave, 66, said in an interview. “If I could talk to Natasha, she would say, ‘What’s the matter with you?’

“I can’t speak for others in other professions,” she added, “but very often work is an enormous solace, just keeping to the routine, showing up at work. For those of us in the theater, it’s like almost a no-brainer. Because what we do has so much to do with conjuring spirits.”