Wit: A Play by Margaret Edson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wit: A Play
Book Review: Great Story
Summary: 5 Stars
This story is on video but I would recommend that anyone read this book because it makes you look at life and love different. Although this was a used book, the seller kept it in good condition.Book Review: Great play
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Harrowing, transcendent drama
Summary: 5 Stars
I just returned from a weekend in NYC where I saw this play, which won the Pulitzer Prize last week. It is, at the risk of sound hyperbolic, one of the most gripping, exciting, passionate, moving, and intellectually daunting evenings of theatre I have ever seen. I bought the book and reread it on the way home. While nothing can duplicate Kathleen Chalfant's brilliant performance as Vivian Bearing, it is a play that also lives extraordinarily well on the page. Read it--your understanding of life, death, poetry, medicine, the body, and the soul will never be the same.Book Review: I would give it 0 stars if I could
Summary: 1 Stars
This play was so full of stereotypes, it is ironic that the title is "Wit." The cold, driven, successful English professor gets cancer, her doctors are absolutely inhuman, insensitive jerks (of course), and this makes her realize what a cruel person she has been all her life. It's sooo predictable and obvious that I'm surprised there wasn't a blinking sign telling me when to laugh when I saw it in the theatre. I can NOT believe something so unoriginal won the Pulitzer. The one thing I give the play credit for is the clever dialogue. But the cleverness of the dialogue could never make up for the lack of real people in the play. The stereotypes masquerading as characters made the play shallow in the end and no amount of "witty" dialogue could make up for that.Book Review: Intelligent and moving - one of the best plays I've read.
Summary: 5 Stars
Edson's play is remarkable for its intelligent, caring and entertaining take on a difficult subject. Just reading it is not enough. You must see it on stage. I was fortunate to see Judith Light in the Union Square Theatre producion...it left me in awe.