Wit - Acting Edition by Margaret Edson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wit - Acting Edition
Book Review: An Amazing Work of Art
Summary: 5 Stars
Upon realizing that this is Margaret Edison's first play ever written, I was astonished! An extraordinary modern play touching a very sensitive, dreaded disease utilizing both "wit" and a ray of emotions in portraying a very real situation. This is one of the first times I have seen a playwright utilize her talent in both writing a marvellous play and understanding the staging in order to get it across to the audience. Margaret Edison's play "Wit" is a genuine masterpiece. I strongly recommend production of this play as I am certain of its success. I personally look forward to other works from this extremely talented lady.
Book Review: Beyond Belief
Summary: 5 Stars
I have never read such a beautiful play. Margaret Edson writes an intelligent treatment of a highly gifted John Donne scholar, Vivian Bearing, who enters a new life situation and finds herself completely inept spiritually. The new plane of existence is terminal cancer. If you are looking for an engaging plot, don't buy or read this play. This is a drama for the mind. The play is also extremely witty (no pun intended). It's worldview is basically Christian, because of its resounding affirmation of the goodness of human life, and the brutalities wreaked by self-centredness. This drama also deals with the issue of what constitutes good scholarship. Is good scholarship just a "way of quantifying the complexities of the puzzle" (in the words of the young post-doc researcher, Jason Posner), or does good scholarship give us a vital way of answering old questions?
This is also a play in praise of simplicity. When Vivian Bearing is on her deathbed, she recoils in horror at the thought of her old professor reciting one of the Holy Sonnets. Instead, the wizened old professor reads Vivian a children's story, a little "allegory of the soul: Wherever you go God will find it." God finds Vivian's soul, but only after she has been stripped of her old pretentions and arrogance. I have never read such a beautiful literary depiction of genuine spiritual conversion (with the possible exception of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov).
You cannnot call yourself a well-read person unless you've read this play. This drama will be read for centuries hence. You can also buy a good film version on Amazon, which was released in 2000, casting Emma Thompson as Vivian Bearing (one of her best roles, I believe), and the lovely, talented Audra McDonald as her primary nurse.
Book Review: Read it, see it, be transformed!
Summary: 5 Stars
Wit. A perfect name for a perfect play, yes, perfect! Margaret Edson's first foray into theater is a masterpiece which, she'll probably never out-do, but who cares. If you get a chance to see the play, do so, sell your teeth if you have to. I saw it at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco with Judith Light. What a powerful show! I had no idea what I was going to see, I walked out of the theatre, transformed. From the very start of the play when she says, "It is not my intention to give away the plot, but I think I die at the end." We know she's a force. Then at the end, when she finally throws away all the metaphysical conceit, the bantering about, and the complications of the meaning of life. When she finally adopts simplicity and kindness. When she throws off the IV, catheter, the cap covering her bald head, her hospital ID bracelet, and her gowns, and stands naked before us, reaching up, transformed. We know it's never to late, to change, to be transformed. And we find that in fact, along with Vivian, we are indeed transformed. We need to be loving, caring, and cherish what and who we have, and we know we will. We're gentler, better, transformed.Vivian Bearing, a professor of seventeenth-century poetry, specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, has stage four, metastatic, ovarian cancer; there is no stage five. She's in the hospital throughout the play except in flashbacks to her college years, her childhood years, and her teaching years. She is a no-nonsense woman, steeping her life in the intricacies of metaphysical poetry. In her field she is "a force." We know she's a force because we can see it, or read it from the time she walks out on stage. Immeasureably strong, she learns that it is never to late to learn a lesson, to undergo a change, to be transformed. Even if one has stage four, metastatic, ovarian cancer. She has no friends, has never been exposed to human kindness, has never shown human kindness. Bearing is a Scrooge-like characters who becomes her own ghosts, and she, and we, are transformed. Enchanted.
The insensitivity of the doctors is accurate, but not the point, the question in philosophical: Why do we do what we do? Why do we make the choices we make? The eternal Why? There wasn't a dry eye in the theatre when Vivian Bearing gave the nurse half of her popsicle, finally, learning how to love. To give. To live. As Bearing says herself, "Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of imagination and wildly shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit. Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness." That's right it is, thank you Vivian, It's time to go. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Book Review: SEE THIS PLAY!
Summary: 5 Stars
That's all there is to say. See (or at least read) Wit with an open mind and heart, and the story will take root in you. Friends and I saw it more than a week ago, and we're still marveling at the searing power of the story, the incredible humor, the brilliant performance by Judith Light, and the superb stagecraft. I've even caught myself telling total strangers to see Wit! Nothing I can recall ever hit me in quite this way.(Full disclosure: Before she moved to Atlanta, Margaret Edson worshiped at the same church in Washington, D.C. I knew her a little and always admired her luminous talents and down-to-earth lack of pretension.)
Book Review: Wit analysis
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book for a nursing class I am taking. It's a wonderful depiction of hospitalization, giving accurate portrayals of doctors, nurses and patients, which is surprising being written by a lay person. It was an easy read, about 45 minutes. I would recommend this book.
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