Wit: A Play by Margaret Edson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wit: A Play
Book Review: WIT teaches us how to live in the new millenium.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a play about love and grace. I cried and laughed and lent it to everyone. It's brilliant funny. I can't wait until she writes anotherone. I know why Margaret Edson won the Pulitzer Prize.Book Review: What Not To Do and Why To Do It Anyway
Summary: 5 Stars
Playwright Margaret Edson does everything in this play that playwrighting and directing teachers tell their students not to do. She speaks in jargon. She breaks the fourth wall. She demands a hefty cast. She's digressive.Yet the play, both in performance and as literature, is compelling. This play, in the great expressionist style, creates a world as seen through the eyes of only one character. Events unfold from a distinct point of view that is made comprehensible to us by allowing that POV to address us apart from stage events.
Edson, a literature graduate and former oncology ward worker, is knowledgeable about the topics that inform this play: classic poetry and cancer. The connection between the metaphysical lyrics of John Donne and the imminent mortality of uterine cancer provide a smooth harmony in the character of Dr. Vivian Bearing. Thematically and structurally, this play has the theatrical elements that make playwrights from Sophocles to Strindburg to Sam Shepard writers of great significance.
This isn't to say the play is easy to stage. Scene shifts take place without a pause to let actors get their feet. Our narrator gets a pelvic exam in full view of the audience. Supporting characters double on the fly, and lead characters have to change ages from scene to scene. At the final moments, our narrator appears in front of us as naked as the day she was born.
But these difficult elements contribute to the great meaning that is this play. Without these trials, the production wouldn't touch us in the same way. We need these almost offensive structural components to understand what the narrator must endure.
This play is difficult to read, difficult to stage, difficult to watch. Yet the things that make it difficult make it most ultimately rewarding. A modern classic from a forward-thinking mind.
Book Review: What a play should be
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the ideal play. It's intelligent, moving, witty (as you could probably guess), and really makes you examine what you value as important in your life. This is more than just a story of a woman dealing with cancer, it is about a woman dealing with her views on life as a whole. (The play also manages to incorporate some great John Donne poetry.) The scene in which Vivian's teacher reads _The Runaway Bunny_ is one of the most single touching scenes ever written for the stage. Buy it, read it, see it, this is a great play.Book Review: Whos the Boss now?
Summary: 5 Stars
Due to the fact that the play, Wit, by Magret Edson, stars Judith Light, I am her to tell you that the play is at least as good as the best ever Whos the Boss episode ( arguably the one when Judith Lights character goes to a shrink and it is revealed that she does not know what a RBI is ( run batted in ) ). Anyway, the play is fantastic. It is the story of a 50'ish college professor who is struck with cancer. Throwing caution into the wind, Vivian decides to take on the strongest possible attempt at a cure. This proves to be a painful decision. Despite her suffering, Vivian keeps on hoping, and stays with the regimen if not to save her own life but to at least increase knowledge of others ( the main goal of her whole life ) Wit is an incredible play and should be shared by everyone. SO READ IT.Book Review: Wit
Summary: 5 Stars
I myself have terminal Breast Cancer. I felt every emotion she expressed. I watched it on Tv. I have been trying to find out if it was true. It was so real for me. I was sick as I watched it, and at the end as she looked to the audience, when the doctor asked about her pain, I reached out to the TV and held her hand. And the nurse was like myself, I worked as a Nurse, so I felt both actors feelings. I won't forget it.