Talkin' Broadway Wit Literature Saves. That would be my bumper sticker if I put such things on my car. Literature transforms us, elates us, gives us the illusion of immortality. It is heady stuff, to find truth in a poem, to feel that shock of recognition. Wit , Vivian Bearing has dedicated her life to words, to the holy sonnets of John Donne and though they cannot prevent her death, they have sustained her in life.
Wit provides the audience no feeling of suspense.
She has been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive strain of ovarian cancer which does not respond to the treatment she is given. Drama requires conflict, and the certainty of death is not inherently dramatic. What compels the audience through this play is the way in which those last moments are spent, and the dignity this remarkable woman is able to exhibit in the midst of frustration, shame and fear. Her doctors seem much more interested in her use as data for their studies than they are in her recovery. The playwright, Margaret Edson, who worked on the cancer inpatient unit of a research hospital, has written a play drenched with insight into the terrifying and often humiliating experience of patients at their most vulnerable.