This past week I was privileged to see Margaret Edson's Wit , the Pulitzer Prize winning play of 1999, with Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Obie, and Lucille Lortel Award winning Kathleen Chalfant recreating her Off-Broadway triumph. Made ever more poignant by the January 17th death at age 38 of its director, Derek Anson Jones, Wit is a surprisingly uplifting work which celebrates the discovery of life in the face of certain death. For those who don't know, the luminous Ms. Chalfant portrays Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., a scholar of English literature, focusing primarily on the works of the 17th century metaphysical poet John Donne. The play, at an intermissionless 90 minutes, allows us to watch Bearing's academic life in flashbacks and some of her time spent in the hospital. What we come to find is that Bearing has hidden behind her academic brilliance and Donne's tremendously complex poetry to the point that she has never connected with her own humanity.
Bearing is shown living and teaching with an uncompromising, hyperbolic iron fist.
His journey is a fascinating one in this play. The key to both of these riddled situations is the recognition of the purpose of the discovery - the enlightenment and enrichment made possible. Thus, the process is, as always, what is most important. She is challenging, but indeed she is somehow endearing, in that her greatest strength is her biggest frailty. Chalfant lays it all out there in a bravura performance in which she is sometimes vomiting, at other times articulating incredibly textured poetry and at all times bald.