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1st appeared 09 May 2000 NINA'S ARTS NOTES Review – "Wit" a Must-See for Caregivers The play called "Wit" is about physicians and caregivers in a teaching hospital, among many other things. If only for its medical portrayals, which have aroused much comment from health care professionals, the play is an imperative must-see for UCSF caregivers and all who support them. There is not much time: "Wit" runs at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre only until May 28.
Judith Light is phenomenal as Bearing, an enormously demanding role that reaches deep dimensions not usually required of the sitcom star she used to be. "Transformational," "Poignantly close to the bone," "Incandescent," "Cause for exaltation," are a few critics’ descriptions of her performance, which draws on her own observations of ovarian cancer patients, as well as on the playwright¹s hospital clerkship. Judith Light¹s Vivian Bearing is emaciatedly thin under her white hospital gown, bald under her red baseball cap, and her voice ranges from that of a little girl in flashbacks to herself as a child to the stentorian tones of her reenacted literary lecturing. The setting is a hospital where large white curtains are suddenly pulled to one side or another with a sharp startling rattle when Baring and her IV pole are moved to different places for treatments and tests, in and out of wheelchairs, back to her bed. Her oncologist, white-bearded Dr. Kelekian, played by the excellent Brian Smiar, proposes eight weeks of "full dose" chemo and she thinks she can take it. She is 50, unmarried, acerbic, a terror to her students, supremely confident of her toughness as well as her scholarship and prominence in the study of the metaphysical poets. At one point late in the play, Prof. Bearing sums up her career as "publish and perish." The physical and the metaphysical meet throughout and especially when the dying Bearing quotes the John Donne sonnet which begins, "Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so: For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow Die not, poor death; nor yet canst thou kill me..." (Donne’s most famous line is, of course, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.") Both Dr. Kelekian and his bright and brash young assistant, Dr. Posner, are primarily researchers. The data obtained from Bearing’s cancer cells are what interests them, rather than the patient. Daniel Sarnelli is so good as Posner that you want to kick him every time he reminds himself to be "clinical" and cheerfully asks Bearing yet again, "How are we feeling today?" She has learned to answer, "Fine." Lisa Tharps gives a fine portrayal of sympathetic nurse Susie Monahan. The only other person who shows any tenderness toward Bearing is her former teacher and mentor, E.M. Ashford, PhD, played crisply by Diane Kagan, who reappears mysteriously toward the end to cradle her pupil¹s last weak moments. After the inevitable happens, Judith Light is suddenly seen on the other side of the stage. Standing in a blazing white shaft of light, she takes off her gown and cap, and stands for five seconds with arms upraised, naked and resurgent. Soon after "Wit" first opened, the New York Times carried a long op ed piece by Abigail Zuger, MD who pointed out that "all the accoutrements of cancer care in a sophisticated teaching hospital are here, from the chilly waits in the radiology department for the technician to come back from his break to the pelvic exam that has to be repeated so that one more trainee can feel her giant tumor...." and asked, "Is this really what being in a teaching hospital is like?" She replied, "less and less so," and added, "whole courses in communication with patients, especially when there is bad news in the offing, are becoming standard parts of the curriculum. Still, the bottom line is that none of these caveats really matters. What matters is that the vision of "Wit" is the way it is all perceived to be, in one of the serious works of art of this decade to fold details of contemporary medical practice into its message -- and the way it will be remembered." Another physician wrote to the Times that he was "sorry to say that I have met many colleagues who might have inspired the playwright....As a patient, I endured the identical humiliation and dehumanization depicted in the play: no privacy, no respect, no consideration." And yet another physician wrote, "The play is brilliant because it dramatizes the moral challenges of professional expertise -- whether of a scholar-teacher or physician-researcher: the professional must bring expertise to earth without crushing those whom it is intended to benefit." "Wit" plays through May 28th at the Curran Theatre, 445 Geary (between Mason and Taylor) Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 pm, plus Wednesday matinees May 10, 17, & 24 at 2 pm; Saturdays at 2 pm, and 8 pm; Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets available through Ticketmaster at 415/512-7770. Curran box office opens two hours before each performance. For more information call 551-2000 or visit www.bestofbroadway-sf.com. An audio-vision performance of "Wit" for the blind will be given Saturday, May 20, at 2 pm. Audio-vision listening devices must be reserved in advance through ticket seller. A San Francisco resident for 20 years, Nina Beckwith is a longtime arts writer and music critic and a former Time magazine overseas correspondent. She was founding editor of the UC Berkeley Library newsletter Bene Legere and worked for six years with the late Dr. Peter Ostwald, Director of the UCSF Health Program for Performing Artists. |
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Most
importantly the play is about the unconquerable human soul. After being
turned down by many producers as too harrowing, it was put on in 1998
at a tiny off-Broadway theatre and won a Pulitzer Prize for first-time
playwright Margaret Edson. To experience this play and identify with
its protagonist, Professor Vivian Bearing, a scholar of 17th-century
poetry and particularly the holy sonnets of John Donne, hospitalized
with fourth stage metastatic ovarian cancer -- "there is no fifth stage,"
she remarks -- is to feel the same intensity of pity and terror as in
classic Greek tragedy.