HOME
PAGE
SEARCH CurtainUp
REVIEWS
FEATURES
ADDRESS
BOOKS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
DC
NEWS
(Etcetera)
BOOKS
and CDs
(with Amazon search)
OTHER
PLACES
Berkshires
DC (Washington)
London
Los Angeles
QUOTES
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
Type too small?
NYC Weather
|
A CurtainUp
Review
WitThe advance "buzz" on this show has been that it is a play
about a woman dying of cancer that affords a terrific actress a platform
for a memorable performance. (See CurtainUp's review of last month's
production in the Berkshires, linked below.) The production now on stage
at MCC Theater fully substantiates that description. There are, in fact,
three distinct albeit intertwined themes in first-time playwright Margaret
Edson's Wit, and each affords a strong reason to rush to
see it. (As the box below notes, this is a very short run.)
One week ago, I reviewed When the Bough Breaks, a new play about
a couple that must confront the awful circumstances of the premature birth
of a brain damaged baby. I made the following observation in my review:
This new play concerns itself with a sensation everyone hopes
never to feel. I confess I was hesitant to experience it even vicariously.
The good and bad news is that Clyman [the playwright] adorns the play with
enough diversions so you don't feel it all that much.
Wit has no such diversions. The audience is immediately confronted
with the first-person of Dr. Vivian Bearing (Kathleen Chalfant), a fifty
year old English Literature professor whose adult life has been immersed
in the metaphysical poetry of the 17th Century and who must now face the
painful, humiliating path toward her "playes last scene,... pilgrimages
last mile;... spans last inch,... minutes latest point...." [per the 3rd
of Donne's "Holy Sonnets"] The focus never shifts. A hospital gown covers
her naked body; a red baseball cap shields her hairless head. It is a role
that begs for the type of committed performance Ms. Chalfant renders, the
kind for which the usual words I would use, like "compelling," seem understated.
Yet the central story of Wit is not somber but indeed, as the
title would tease, witty. It is as if Dr. Bearing videotaped her bout with
terminal cancer, and then edited and narrated it from her final resting
place. Edson has somehow, remarkably, found a voice for Dr. Bearing that
is at peace, and Chalfant has assumed it with brilliance. No matter how
closely the tragedy of cancer touches the living, there is a sense of remove
that cannot be avoided. The play seems to have found a way to cross this
bridge much as Donne creates (quoting Dame Helen Gardner via Wit's
South Coast Rep dramaturg) "the illusion that we are listening to the very
accent of passion become conscious of its power".
Wit is just as astute in its observation of how Dr. Bearing lived
her life, the play's second but no less compelling theme. Falling in love
with words at her father's knee as a young girl, Vivian seems to have maintained
a monogamous relationship with literature. Her scholarship was her consuming
and unrelenting passion, blinding her to other concerns and even to the
underlying sense of humanity it should be teaching. Until her very last
moments, she stoically endures pain and humiliation without flinching,
physically or emotionally. She also suffers it alone. Where another person
might have a friend hold her hand for comfort, Vivian's poems are her only
friends. Only a poignant -- if too sentimental for Donne -- deathbed visit
from her graduate school professor (Helen Stenborg), and a brief acknowledgment
of the kindness of her hospital nurse (Paula Pizzi), interrupt Vivian's
emotional solitude.
This portrait creates a segue to Edson's final theme, a comment on the
nature of modern research medicine. Agreeing to submit to an arduous course
of experimental chemotherapy, as encouraged by her oncologist (excellently
portrayed by Walter Charles), Bearing encounters his bright research fellow,
Jason Posner, M.D. (Alec Phoenix), who is also a former student of hers.
He received an "A-" in Donne but now, myopically but ecstatically focused
on the purity of his scholarship, has lost all of the pathmarkers to humanity
that medicine should produce. He deserves an "F-" in bedside manner.
What Edson reveals, of course, is that Bearing and Posner are kindred
spirits in their intellectual isolation. Phoenix is superb throughout,
especially so in a scene in which Dr. Bearing, in self-recognition, asks
him, "Why cancer?" [as his life's work]. She's not at all surprised by
his thoroughly inhumane answer: "cancer is awesome".
Wit is a stunning piece of theater. Its only weak moments occur
when Edson emphasizes a bit too heavily the unfortunate indignities, insensitivities
and simple incompetencies of Dr. Bearing's hospital experience. Although,
as Elyse Sommer noted in the review from the Berkshires, this can serve
as a "cautionary tale" for medical professionals, it threatens to ground
the play. No matter. Edson's play soars like Dr. Bearing's spirit.
For Elyse Sommer's review of Wit at Shakespeare & Co. go here
WIT
by Margaret Edson
Directed by Derek Anson Jones
starring Kathleen Chalfant with Walter Charles, Alec Phoenix, Paula
Pizzi, Helen Stenborg, Brian J. Carter, Daniel Sarnelli, Alli Steinberg
and Lisa Tharps
Scenic Design: Myung Hee Cho
Costume Design: Ilona Somogyi
Lighting Design: Michael Chybowski
Original Music and Sound Design: David Van Tieghem
MCC Theater, 120 West 28th Street (6/7 AV) (212) 727 - 7765
opened September 17 closes October 4, 1998
Reviewed by Les Gutman September 18,
1998 |
|
