Intensely dark ‘Wit’ spotlight’s death
This play won a Pulitzer Prize, this article will not.
As always, I know nothing about theatre and less about reviewing.
“Wit” was written by Margaret Edson, daughter of a newspaper columnist and a medical social worker. She has said that she won’t write another play, which gives Edson a 100 percent batting average for writing Pulitzer winning drama.
The protagonist is Dr. Vivian Bearing, a hard-nosed philosophy academic played by Hannah Clark, senior of Littleton, Colorado. Dr. Bearing’s life work has been devoted to the study of 17th Century poet John Donne, whose writing is characterized by complex, yet witful insights into the metaphysical relationship between life and death.
Dr. Bearing’s career is interrupted when she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She divulges within the first few minutes of the play that she has two hours left to live and will probably die at the end.
The scenes transition rapidly through vignettes and flashback sequences. I was tempted to use the cliché of “breaking the fourth wall,” but there aren’t walls. The whole play is presented as a theater-in-the-round, a term that I wasn’t aware of until Director and Visual and Performing Arts professor Roger Mays pointed it out to me.
Clark’s character steps in and out of the action to deliver monologues while the rest of the hospital workers go on about their business, seemingly unaware of the pain and struggle she is facing.
One of these monologues occurs during a consultation with her doctor, Harvey Kelekian, played by Wacey Gallegos, junior of Ainsworth. While Kelekian tells her about an experimental chemotherapy technique, Bearing becomes distracted and lost in the meanings of the medical terminology being discussed. She snaps back into the scene, and signs a consent form to begin the treatment.
The flashback scenes deal with Bearings rise to academic fame. Her father, played by Ryan Steinhour, senior of Mansfield, Ohio; discusses words with her at an early age and sparks her interest in language. An exchange in the office of her mentor, a stern professor named E.M. Ashford, played by Asia Carr, sophomore of Lusk, Wyoming; pushes Bearing to develop herself as a scholar. The mentality is one that Bearing later applies to analyze her own situation as her health continues to decline.
Another uncomfortable scene brings in Dr. Kelekian’s research fellow, a young doctor named Jason Posner, played by junior Nathan Wojciechowski of Gering. Posner is tasked to give Bearing a pelvic exam, prior to which he divulges that he is a former student of hers. Posner, like Bearing, is consumed by his research and lacks a compassionate clinical touch, which seems to add another dimension to her suffering.
Bearing finds a warm hand to console her in her final hours; nurse Susie Monahan, played by Jada Fisk, junior of Rapid City, South Dakota.
Monahan seems to be the only person who is interested in Bearing’s wellbeing and final wishes, discussing the heaviest decision she has to make: a do-not-resuscitate order.
The subject matter of the play was intense, but it is easily the best performance I’ve seen from the CSC Theatre Department. I would recommend you experience it for yourself.