Customer Reviews

Wit - Acting Edition

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought and read the play after seeing it performed twice by Judith Light, once off-Broadway and once regionally in Washington, D.C. I believe one would find the play equally powerful without having seen it. Perhaps because Margaret Edson never had formal training as a playwright, no one told her what she "shouldn't" do, and as a result, Wit is a brilliant, searing, *unique* vision of how a woman's mind becomes sharper and more insightful even as her body deteriorates. The character of Dr. Vivian Bearing reminded me a lot of Maria Callas in "Master Class" (at least, as rendered on stage); both are strong, imperious characters who draw you into their confidence while challenging you to keep up. And it's a relief to find a play that doesn't talk down to its readers/viewers, and actually contains, for instance, a lecture on a Donne sonnet -- which, incredibly, moves the action forward. After reading or seeing the play, you feel emotionally drained but energized.

I'm both a cancer patient and a playwright, and I can only hope that I'm able to produce as eloquent and powerful a work as Margaret Edson has given us.

Playwright Margaret Edson does everything in this play that playwrighting and directing teachers tell their students not to do. She speaks in jargon. She breaks the fourth wall. She demands a hefty cast. She's digressive.

Yet the play, both in performance and as literature, is compelling. This play, in the great expressionist style, creates a world as seen through the eyes of only one character. Events unfold from a distinct point of view that is made comprehensible to us by allowing that POV to address us apart from stage events.

Edson, a literature graduate and former oncology ward worker, is knowledgeable about the topics that inform this play: classic poetry and cancer. The connection between the metaphysical lyrics of John Donne and the imminent mortality of uterine cancer provide a smooth harmony in the character of Dr. Vivian Bearing. Thematically and structurally, this play has the theatrical elements that make playwrights from Sophocles to Strindburg to Sam Shepard writers of great significance.

This isn't to say the play is easy to stage. Scene shifts take place without a pause to let actors get their feet. Our narrator gets a pelvic exam in full view of the audience. Supporting characters double on the fly, and lead characters have to change ages from scene to scene. At the final moments, our narrator appears in front of us as naked as the day she was born.

But these difficult elements contribute to the great meaning that is this play. Without these trials, the production wouldn't touch us in the same way. We need these almost offensive structural components to understand what the narrator must endure.

This play is difficult to read, difficult to stage, difficult to watch. Yet the things that make it difficult make it most ultimately rewarding. A modern classic from a forward-thinking mind.

Dr. Vivian Bearing is renowned throughout the literary world for her expertise on John Donne's seventh century Holy Sonnets. The professor enjoys teaching at the University, but not as much as she relishes a rational analysis of Donne's brilliant work.

However, the fiftyish Vivian soon learns that she suffers from late stage ovarian cancer. The University medical research staff provide her a rare opportunity to receive special experimental treatment. She soon finds herself feeling sicker from the "cure" than the disease even as she discovers that it is simpler to learn than to teach. As Vivian goes through the eight stage process, she begins to appreciate the Donne sonnets as simple works of art by a great metaphysical poet, and not just intellectual fodder to be ripped asunder by English teachers like her.

W;T is an incredible play that forces the audience (reader or attendee) to evaluate ones values. The main theme is brutally honest yet done in a humorous, thought provoking manner. Margaret Edson provides one of the top plays of the decade as it leaves everyone agreeing it deserved the Pulitzer it won. This play (in book or theater form) needs to be experienced to understand the emotions its generates. Great work by a master playwright.

I have never read such a beautiful play. Margaret Edson writes an intelligent treatment of a highly gifted John Donne scholar, Vivian Bearing, who enters a new life situation and finds herself completely inept spiritually. The new plane of existence is terminal cancer. If you are looking for an engaging plot, don't buy or read this play. This is a drama for the mind.

The play is also extremely witty (no pun intended). It's worldview is basically Christian, because of its resounding affirmation of the goodness of human life, and the brutalities wreaked by self-centredness. This drama also deals with the issue of what constitutes good scholarship. Is good scholarship just a "way of quantifying the complexities of the puzzle" (in the words of the young post-doc researcher, Jason Posner), or does good scholarship give us a vital way of answering old questions?

This is also a play in praise of simplicity. When Vivian Bearing is on her deathbed, she recoils in horror at the thought of her old professor reciting one of the Holy Sonnets. Instead, the wizened old professor reads Vivian a children's story, a little "allegory of the soul: Wherever you go God will find it." God finds Vivian's soul, but only after she has been stripped of her old pretentions and arrogance. I have never read such a beautiful literary depiction of genuine spiritual conversion (with the possible exception of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov).

You cannnot call yourself a well-read person unless you've read this play. This drama will be read for centuries hence. You can also buy a good film version on Amazon, which was released in 2000, casting Emma Thompson as Vivian Bearing (one of her best roles, I believe), and the lovely, talented Audra McDonald as her primary nurse.

Wit. A perfect name for a perfect play, yes, perfect! Margaret Edson's first foray into theater is a masterpiece which, she'll probably never out-do, but who cares. If you get a chance to see the play, do so, sell your teeth if you have to. I saw it at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco with Judith Light. What a powerful show! I had no idea what I was going to see, I walked out of the theatre, transformed. From the very start of the play when she says, "It is not my intention to give away the plot, but I think I die at the end." We know she's a force. Then at the end, when she finally throws away all the metaphysical conceit, the bantering about, and the complications of the meaning of life. When she finally adopts simplicity and kindness. When she throws off the IV, catheter, the cap covering her bald head, her hospital ID bracelet, and her gowns, and stands naked before us, reaching up, transformed. We know it's never to late, to change, to be transformed. And we find that in fact, along with Vivian, we are indeed transformed. We need to be loving, caring, and cherish what and who we have, and we know we will. We're gentler, better, transformed.

Vivian Bearing, a professor of seventeenth-century poetry, specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, has stage four, metastatic, ovarian cancer; there is no stage five. She's in the hospital throughout the play except in flashbacks to her college years, her childhood years, and her teaching years. She is a no-nonsense woman, steeping her life in the intricacies of metaphysical poetry. In her field she is "a force." We know she's a force because we can see it, or read it from the time she walks out on stage. Immeasureably strong, she learns that it is never to late to learn a lesson, to undergo a change, to be transformed. Even if one has stage four, metastatic, ovarian cancer. She has no friends, has never been exposed to human kindness, has never shown human kindness. Bearing is a Scrooge-like characters who becomes her own ghosts, and she, and we, are transformed. Enchanted.

The insensitivity of the doctors is accurate, but not the point, the question in philosophical: Why do we do what we do? Why do we make the choices we make? The eternal Why? There wasn't a dry eye in the theatre when Vivian Bearing gave the nurse half of her popsicle, finally, learning how to love. To give. To live. As Bearing says herself, "Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of imagination and wildly shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit. Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness." That's right it is, thank you Vivian, It's time to go. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Six years ago, when I was living in San Francisco and attending high school, a friend of my family's took us all to see a production of 'Wit' because it was making a highly anticipated debut there after a run in New York. I remember this experience not because I thought that the play was good, but because it had made me so uncomfortable. I just didn't get it; perhaps I was too young. Last week I found myself in a bookstore, browsing for a new read, when I stumbled upon a lone copy of this book on the shelf. I skimmed through it and was intrigued by the play. I bought it and gave it another chance, and I am so glad that I did. Frankly, I was stunned by how beautiful -- and sadly truthful -- Margaret Edson's play is. Perhaps its that in the years since I saw "Wit" performed I have had a cancer scare in my family, and have seen a lot of what she has captured in her play firsthand. Whatever the reason, I could no longer deny the power of the story because it made me uncomfortable to think about such things. I would highly recommend this play: it says so much about humanity, fear, loss, regret, and life in under a hundred pages -- truly an incredible feat. It would take most writer's at least double that to say half of what Edson conveys so easily.

This play is nothing short of beautiful. I read W;t this afternoon, and it was the most genuinely moving, heart-wrenching work of art that I have yet encountered. Written with the utmost eloquence and truth (and, of course, wit), Ms. Edson creates an utterly facinating and spirited character in Vivian Bearing, a brilliant, hard-nosed professor of 17th century poetry, specifically the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, who is diagnosed with fourth stage ovarian cancer. I insist that everyone either get your tickets for W;t at the Union Square Theatre or go to your local bookseller and pick up a copy of the play. It is one that you will never forget.

I had previously only seen the TV version with Emma Thompson. But here's how New Yorker magazine described the TV version: "Anyone who makes the effort to transfer a play to TV runs the risk of focusing excessively on plot and dialogue and of failing to catch the elusive nonverbal elements in his butterfly net. This is what happened with the TV version of `Wit'... Most of the deliberately self-conscious stage devices, which were integral to the play, and necessary to give full dimension the main character, were gone, and the TV version became largely a story about an interesting woman dying of cancer".

Even though the TV version was excellent, the book version was better. I strongly recommend the book to anyone who's only seen the TV version.

Reading plays is somewhat of an art.
Most plays are not nice to read since dialogue will usually feel flat and stage directions usually leave a lot to the imagination of both actors and directors, requiring additional concentration to picture what is really going on.
Wit is one of those plays that is a pleasure to read even for anyone not used to read them. Part of this is that Wit is mainly a big monologue that tells us the current predicament of the main character while still giving us small glimpses of her previous life.
And unlike so many works in these days and age, it is also a play that has something to say. As One Flew Over The Cookoo's Nest was a sharp criticism on mental institutions, so will Wit remain a real slap in the face for modern medicine and hospital care. And alas... something will unfortunately ring true no matter what country you live in.

I did not have the chance to see the Mike Nichol's adaptation with Emma Thompson, so I cannot say how it compares.

This is the ideal play. It's intelligent, moving, witty (as you could probably guess), and really makes you examine what you value as important in your life. This is more than just a story of a woman dealing with cancer, it is about a woman dealing with her views on life as a whole. (The play also manages to incorporate some great John Donne poetry.) The scene in which Vivian's teacher reads _The Runaway Bunny_ is one of the most single touching scenes ever written for the stage. Buy it, read it, see it, this is a great play.