Wit: A Play

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.

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.

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.

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.