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A review by theanitaalvarez
Wit: A Play by Margaret Edson
5.0
This is one powerful play. I'd really love to watch it on stae and to see how everything is interpreted. Of course I pictured everything in my head, but seeing a play on stage is never the same as imagining it (and it's usually easier to picture it as a movie of some sorts, forgetting about the stage). So, I'd be totally on board for a performance of Wit
The play is about Vivian Bearing a 50-year-old English Literature professor (especialized in John Donne's poetry), who is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer (stage IV). The play is narrated by her, telling us about her life as a professor, her diagnosis and treatment and her meditations on life an death.
That's the most powerful thing about the play, questioning about the important things in life. At the beginning, Vivian is kind of emotionally detached. She is single, has no family or emergency contacts, and is clearly dedicated to intellectual work, rather than humanity. There is a point on the play where she recalls listening two of her students joking about something she said in class. She says that the exchange was funny, yes, but she valued wit in poetry, not in conversation (or something along that line). I think that showed her character pretty well.
When she discovers her illness, she becomes something like the poetry she's been studying her whole life. She's an object of study, of multiple tests and cold examination by people that don't really care about her. One of her doctors is a young man who took her course in college. He clearly admires her, but he's not able to see her as a person as he treats her. He also comments that the course she taught was incredibly detached, for a course that dealt with poetry, and that he had courses on chemestry that felt more humane (again, I can't remember the exact words, but they were something similar). At the beginning, Vivian was somewhat detached from herself, and looked at herself as an object of study. But, as the play progresses, she realizes that she misses the human touch. She decides that she prefes kindness over intellectualism.
The thing that finally sold the play to me was the ending. It was gorgeous. As Vivian reached the final stage with lots of pain and suffering, a nurse, Susie, told her that she could chose the option of DNR (do not resucitate) if her heart stopped. Vivian decided to accept it, as she clearly wants to stop being an object. She wants the pain to end. I loved Susie for treating her as a person, for allowing her that choice, in a way neither of her doctors did.
The play ends when Vivian's heart stops. Jason (the young doctor who took her course) tries to resucitate her, saying that she is research, while Susie tries to stop him, explaining that it was Vivian's choice. Jason doesn't stop his attempts until he hears the voice of Doctor Kelekian, the head doctor, and he lets Vivian go. The stage directions mention that while the Code team talk about what happened and Jason is shocked by his mess-up, Vivan gets up and begins disrobing as she walks towards a line. That's the end of the play, a beautiful image and acceptance of death as an inevitable fact of life.
As mentioned, that sold the play for me. Just imagining that image blew my mind and made me all teary-eyed. I love when death is not treated as the worse that could happen, just as a normal fact of life. Very beautiful and says a lot with very little words. That's talent!
The play is about Vivian Bearing a 50-year-old English Literature professor (especialized in John Donne's poetry), who is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer (stage IV). The play is narrated by her, telling us about her life as a professor, her diagnosis and treatment and her meditations on life an death.
That's the most powerful thing about the play, questioning about the important things in life. At the beginning, Vivian is kind of emotionally detached. She is single, has no family or emergency contacts, and is clearly dedicated to intellectual work, rather than humanity. There is a point on the play where she recalls listening two of her students joking about something she said in class. She says that the exchange was funny, yes, but she valued wit in poetry, not in conversation (or something along that line). I think that showed her character pretty well.
When she discovers her illness, she becomes something like the poetry she's been studying her whole life. She's an object of study, of multiple tests and cold examination by people that don't really care about her. One of her doctors is a young man who took her course in college. He clearly admires her, but he's not able to see her as a person as he treats her. He also comments that the course she taught was incredibly detached, for a course that dealt with poetry, and that he had courses on chemestry that felt more humane (again, I can't remember the exact words, but they were something similar). At the beginning, Vivian was somewhat detached from herself, and looked at herself as an object of study. But, as the play progresses, she realizes that she misses the human touch. She decides that she prefes kindness over intellectualism.
The thing that finally sold the play to me was the ending. It was gorgeous. As Vivian reached the final stage with lots of pain and suffering, a nurse, Susie, told her that she could chose the option of DNR (do not resucitate) if her heart stopped. Vivian decided to accept it, as she clearly wants to stop being an object. She wants the pain to end. I loved Susie for treating her as a person, for allowing her that choice, in a way neither of her doctors did.
The play ends when Vivian's heart stops. Jason (the young doctor who took her course) tries to resucitate her, saying that she is research, while Susie tries to stop him, explaining that it was Vivian's choice. Jason doesn't stop his attempts until he hears the voice of Doctor Kelekian, the head doctor, and he lets Vivian go. The stage directions mention that while the Code team talk about what happened and Jason is shocked by his mess-up, Vivan gets up and begins disrobing as she walks towards a line. That's the end of the play, a beautiful image and acceptance of death as an inevitable fact of life.
As mentioned, that sold the play for me. Just imagining that image blew my mind and made me all teary-eyed. I love when death is not treated as the worse that could happen, just as a normal fact of life. Very beautiful and says a lot with very little words. That's talent!