A portion of the text below has been
culled from my reviews of Wit’s
original off-Broadway run.
In my junior
year of university, when I was writing for Newsbeat, Queens College, I did a feature on the memorial
service held in honor of the gifted actor and teevee personality Larry Blyden,
who had died suddenly, startlingly, in a car crash in Morocco. As I recall, the
first speaker was dramatist Paddy Chayefsky--who, ironically, would himself
pass on not much more than a year later. His opening remark is one that has
stayed with me--and haunted me--for over two decades. Here's what it was:
"You
never thought about Larry as destructible."
Substitute the
name of your choice for Mr. Blyden's--anyone whose spirit you find indomitable,
or vibrant, or indispensable. Somehow we never think of these people of what
they are, physiologically: fragile "bags of mostly water," as a Star
Trek alien once described
humanity.
But in fact,
the strength of the spirit is rarely enough to stave off death when, by accident
or biological imperative, it becomes insistent...and that insoluble conflict is
at the heart of "Wit",
the strikingly powerful first play by Margaret Edson, a 37-year old elementary school teacher based in
Atlanta.
Striking
describes the play right at the start: even before the houselights go fully
down, our heroine, Vivian Bearing, PhD. (Cynthia Nixon) enters the Kabuki theatre-style hospital set
from the side of the house, wheeling her I.V. drip with her. She wears two
flimsy night gowns, one atop the other, and on her head, a red baseball cap, a
perfunctory acknowledgment of her baldness beneath; one must think of it that
way rather than as any attempt to actually camouflage what chemotherapy has done to her, for almost
immediately, we understand that this is a woman who has no patience for
pretense. Her exaggerated greeting--"Hi! How are you today?"--is proof enough of that, once we understand she
is lampooning the social inanities of the medical profession who treat patients
with cancer. Patients such as herself. She has been diagnosed with stage four
ovarian. How bad is that? Put it this way: there is no stage five. Professor
Bearing explains to us as soon as we make her acquaintance that she understands
that she is a character in a play; that for us, the next--and last--eight
months of her life will go by at an accelerated pace. In real time, "I
have less than two hours."
A practiced
and, in her way, comfortable curmudgeon of 45 (this has been re-tooled for Ms.
Nixon; as originally played by Kathleen Chalfant, Vivan Bearing was 50), she
teaches classic poetry, with a special emphasis on the evocative, dense
contradictions of John Donne, whose work seems tortured by the unresolved
conflict between his rational mind and the unknowability of God and death.
Unmarried and without surviving family, Vivian is very much a contemporary soul
mate, though she would not presume, herself, to identify herself thus. It is
enough for her to recognize the portions of his work that serve as ironic
editorial commentary on what she's going through. At first, she's almost
abstracted from the problem, noting the violations that medical terminology
inflicts on her sense of precise language; and that, indeed, medical
practitioners inflict upon her sense of dignity. (Her first moment of
vulnerability that intellect cannot mitigate, is having a pelvic examination
conducted by a former student. And at that, a former student who, his hand
inside her, feeling the severity of the cancerous mass, lets out a shocked,
unguarded, "Jesus Christ!") But as the illness becomes more serious,
language, wit and quick perception become inadequate protection...even
inadequate companions...in the
face of the betrayals of her body, her gradual infantilization, her humiliating
need for parenting,...and the spectre of the frightening void beyond.
What's so
compelling about "Wit"--other than the inherent drama of impending
death--is the juxtaposition of heroine and circumstance. Vivian wouldn't be
caught dead (pardon the expression) in a maudlin "Terms of
Endearment"-style scenario, because she is hard-wired not to default to mystification, sentiment or
spirituality. Rather, she insists, for as long as she's able, to keep viewing
the world with unromantic candor. And in so doing she--and her creator, Margaret
Edson--renders a very old scenario (the fatal disease drama) freshly realized,
invigorating...and at the end, for some, devastatingly moving.
Though the
current Broadway revival is delivered with solid, professional assurance, and
will likely satisfy most viewers new to the play, it may seem just a little
less substantial to those who remember seeing it with Kathleen Chalfant and/or,
later, Judith Light. Ms. Nixon is a good and gifted performer, but she doesn’t
really have gravitas, not in her bearing (no pun intended), nor in her voice
which lives in the higher part of the female register—soprano speech, if you’ll
allow. She delivers a fine approximation of a woman who is a strict, meticulous
academic, but somehow it’s not authentic enough in that right-down-to-the-toes
way of an actress so right for a
role that she can own it. Chalfant and Light could give us the “deep alto”
curmudgeon; the old soul who has chosen to embrace singleness and never call it
loneliness; the uncompromising, plain-speaking academic for whom standards are
standards that one chooses to meet or not meet—because such could be naturally
extrapolated from those actress’ respective onstage personae. I don’t meant to
say they are like Vivian
Bearing in life (I have no idea), merely that they have the confluence of actors’
toolkit and simple heredity to walk onstage and be Vivian Bearing without having to play her. Ms. Nixon, on the other hand…is stretching
her muscles and her range. Admirably and well, but noticeably. That said she
carries the evening. She just doesn’t infuse it.
Something similar
might be said of Lynne Meadows’
thoroughly capable direction. As with Ms. Nixon’s performance (and presumably
in league with it), Ms. Meadow delivers the letter of the play with expert
polish. What she doesn’t deliver enough of, though, is fine nuance (which was
the hallmark of the original direction of Derek Anson Jones; the production had
a number of signature mind/ear snapshot moments that people who saw it can still recall). I don’t mean to say Ms.
Meadows’ work lacks taste, balance or subtlety when needed; but it isn’t
inspired.
This has a
minor but notable effect on the supporting cast as well; without a lead actress
to dominate as a sort of parent/authority figure—which to some extent, Vivian
is, and like any parent facing the end, even a strict one, becoming more and
more dependent upon her “children”—the younger actors deliver intelligently,
sensitively and as needed…but the contrast is less dynamic. Still, there is
surprising humanity in the young principals, who would at first seem to be
merely functionaries of Vivian's odyssey. But as we get to know her former
student and attending "fellow" (a young doctor played by Greg Keller), and the self-deprecating nurse who is perhaps
the one person on earth who can get away with calling Vivian
"sweetheart" (Carra Patterson), we gain insights into personal viewpoints we might otherwise take
for granted. Doing stalwart double duty in two less showy, but equally
revealing, roles, is Michael Countryman, as Vivian's senior physician and--in a flashback--her father. The
most striking member of the supporting cast, though, is Suzanne Bertish as Vivian’s mentor and colleague. It’s surprising
to find an actress of such international distinction in so small a role—it’s
the equivalent of a star cameo—but she makes every second count, appearing
first in a flashback, when Vivian, as a young student, meets her for the first
time; and later as an old woman visiting Vivian on her death bed. Ironically, Ms.
Bertish brings to her role the gravitas that would make her a splendid Vivian
as well.
Lest any of
this seem like a bad, or negative, review, that’s not my intent, nor is it my
intent to dissuade you from attending. Wit is the kind of play that comes around two, maybe three times a
season; a play so flabbergastingly theatrical and original that you find it
affecting the way you breathe. It remains worth your notice and your time. I
just wish you could see it at its wittiest…