note: entire contents copyright 1999 By Alan W. Petrucelli
Dr. Vivian Bearing is a 50-year-old professor and an expert on the work of the 17th-century poet John Donne. She has verve. Sass. Sardonic humor. And wit. She also has a bald head -- the result of stage four metastatic ovarian cancer ... as she likes to say, "there is no stage five."
There, in a few brief words, is the premise of "Wit", a bold, brazen, often frustrating and economically -staged play starring small-screen icon Judith Light that's taken up residency at Boston's Wilbur Theatre through February 27.
Who's the boss these days in theater circles? It very often is "Wit"; the first play written by Margaret Edson, a 38-year-old kindergarten teacher who lives in Atlanta ... the same Margaret Edson who won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the same play. And everyone is buzzing -- especially those who never buzz -- about the "nude scene:" during the very last moments of the play, right after Bearing/Light dies (I am giving nothing away folks; Bearing/Light announces to the audience at the play's onset that "it is not my intention to give away the plot, but I think I die at the end"), Bearing/Light sheds her hospital gowns, unfolds her arms and stretches upward, in full frontal view, like the proverbial phoenix, as nude as the day she was born.
Please understand that I am not, in any way, dismissing its subject
matter or the effect it seems to be having on its audiences. Dying is tough stuff. Painful.
Horrible. Cancer is an enemy no woman, man, child, even dog or ferret, should
experience. But even such a serious subject matter cannot hide the fact that "Wit" comes across as one of those "important' plays you're supposed to see and
suppose to like, even if you don't. The Pulitzer does that.
The dialogue is sparse, predictable ("I didn't know there could be such
pain on this Earth") and sometimes without wit (Doctor to Bearing: "What do you do for
exercise?" Bearing: "Pace." There are two scenes that shine in their unadulterated
beauty; both involve Light and Lisa Tharps, the actress playing her nurse. The first one
(you'll need to watch closely since it takes place in a mere wordless moment) is when
Bearing, alone in the world and without friends, finally accepts she is going to die and
reaches out to her nurse. Like a child touching a sizzling stove, Bearing pulls back, but not
before she has displayed her humanity. The better, wordier and longer of the two involve a
third "character" -- an orange popsicle Bearing splits in two, offering a surprised
nurse the other half ... a frozen treat that melts the stubborn scab Bearing placed
between them.
Light is certainly not lite. She tackles the role wholeheartedly,
exhausting herself ands us at the same time, infusing Bearing with intellectual arrogance and
scholarly haughtiness. And she know how to deliver -- and deliver well and dryly -- her
character's humor. She in unflinching, chilly (but never cold) and mesmerizing to watch
as she "learns to suffer," as she accepts the delicate balance between disease and despair,
broken spirit and sharp mind, life and death.
It is she who gives "Wit" its life.
"Wit" will be performed Tuesday through Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., at Boston's Wilbur Theatre, through February 27. Tickets range in price from $25 to $62.50. For more information or reservations, call (508) 931-2787.
THE THEATER MIRROR, New England's LIVE Theater Guide
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