Wit: A Play by Margaret Edson Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.82 You Save: $9.18 (66%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $0.82 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Wit: A Play
Book Review: The Poor Man's Version of David Hirson's LA BETE
Summary: 1 Stars
WIT is the kind of earnest play that's hard to criticize because it's written in such unstimulatingly bland good taste. With all its quotations from John Donne, it's the sort of work that pleases middle-of-the-road theatre critics, wins a lot of prizes, and puts audiences fast to sleep. Stage poetry does not HAVE to be dull! One thinks of the linguistic thrill of David Hirson's miraculous LA BETE a few seasons ago, not to mention the dazzling wordplay of Moliere or Ionesco. WIT is never more than adequately written, and is of very little interest to anyone who relishes stage poetry.Book Review: The most powerful play I've seen/read in years
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Unbelieveably close to home
Summary: 5 Stars
Having witnessed the slow death of my mother from congestive heart failure and emphasyma, "Wit" brought home to me (with a gut sucker-punch) all of my own ordeal, not through MY experience, but through my mother's. Watching this, it was as though the writer, the director and Ms. Thompson (is there a FINER actress on the planet right now?) had mined my mother's brain unbeknownst to me as she lay dying in a hospital in order to show me - compassionately, humanely yet SO dramatically and angonizingly - the other side of death. One might have titled it "The Other Side of Dying".
One watches loved ones die and one is concentrated upon one's own grief and feelings; "Wit" takes you over the fence, makes you trod the ground over which the dying patient walks with increasingly faltering steps, right up until the end. "Wit" is not easy viewing; but - from the agonies of its main character, to the ineptutide and shocking lack of compassion by all the medical staff save Audra McDonald's character - it is necessary viewing in a time when insurance and the medical community say they care, but don't act as though they do. One is reminded that "pure research" can never be such, because its results flow from the faults and frailties of the human body and experience. A tour de force performance from a first-rate cast.
Book Review: VERY TOUCHING.....
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to confess that I went to tears watching the movie version, and usually I don't get emotional easily. It's so touching, a PhD professor of middle age find out that she is sick. Ovarian cancer. It was a shock for her, the doctor is talking to her and she can barely react. All through the movie, she looks at the camera from time to time and tell us all what she is thinking and suffering. There is a "brilliant" young doctor (yes, one of those who always wants to be the first and the best no matter what, with a big ego, the big shot of the class) who was her student in one of her literature classes. It made me very angry, his attitude, because he was treating her in a very cold and selfish way, only thinking in the results of the research. I want to say that most of the doctors and scientists are not that way. But once in a while you can find one of these.... weird specimen. The nurse was nice and treated her in a better way. This kind of movie makes us think about the fact that we are all just humans, not matter the title or knowledge you can have. And we are here to help each other, no taking advantadge of each other. I strongly recommend this movie...just be sure to have a box of facial tissues near you.Book Review: W;t is moving & enlightening!
Summary: 5 Stars
When the play opens, Vivian Bearing, Ph. D., is a woman in control of her life & at the top of her profession, which is 17th century metaphysical poetry - a brilliantly difficult cerebral vocation. She is proud of her razor sharp deductive mind & her single-minded dedication to this arcane subject which has kept her far above the madding crowd & a spinster without family.Being a woman of words, she muses upon every one that is tossed her way by her oncologist, his avid pupil & attending technicians. While they are telling her what their textbooks infer, she is listening to what their language implies. Therein lies the humor & the pathos!
Even as she endures the impersonal gawking of research doctors & their students she evaluates their teaching methods & their students' efforts, remembering her own method of teaching & her own attitude toward students. Yet to this woman of words, whenever she is asked how she feels, she is immoderately polite & reticent only uttering that fatuous monosyllable: "Fine!"
W;t has been made into a film for HBO & will be aired in April 2001. Produced by Mike Nichols & starring one of my favorite actresses, Emma Thompson, W;t has come to a medium where everywoman can see & feel & be empowered by this learned lady's example. Made me think long on how we learn is how we teach; what would I do & be like were I to face this form of exit & keeping my wits about me.
I recommend you experience Wit - it will surely change your life! Do check out my full review & catch it on TV: as with taxes, death does come to us all, it's how we face it that makes Wit brilliant!