If ever there was a play that should never be softened around the edges, it’s Margaret Edson’s “Wit.” But Colorado Springs’ TheatreWorks has taken this landmark play’s brittle bones and bathed them in unnecessarily warm milk.
In this stark and stylized story, Dr. Vivian Bearing is an elitist literary scholar whose final lecture will be delivered to us. The subject: her impending, horrific death from ovarian cancer.
Vivian is an exact, unsentimental (and, unsurprisingly, friendless) taskmaster whose young doctor happens to be her former student. And in a nice bit of literary comeuppance, he’s a man made in her own image — unemotional, businesslike and impersonal.
She possesses a masochistic expertise in the murky waters of John Donne. If the difference between a comma and a space in Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud” sonnet is the difference between life and death — a breath — then muting Vivian’s hard angles from 90 degrees to even 85 is the difference between an utterly devastating performance and one that’s . . . something a bit less than that.
Ethelyn Friend is the torchbearer here, an award-winning actor who just can’t fully shed her inherent likability for this role. It’s the playful glint in her eye, the endearingly curled smile. The need to connect with her audience if not her students. You can’t help but want to hug her.
But it’s critical we meet a Vivian who makes you sit up straight in your chair upon eye contact. She’s a woman so detached that, to her, cancer is simply a word to be dissected. Her students are primates for anthropological study. Vivian must be detached, callous, brutal, even, if she is to fully transform by play’s end.
But director Jane Page, understandably informed by her own battle with cancer (which she eloquently addresses in the program), prefers a much gentler and more compassionate approach. The harshness is rounded everywhere, down to an unlikely nurse (Elgin Kelley) who comes off more as Vivian’s weepy best friend than her professional caregiver.
Still, “Wit” is an enormously powerful, Pulitzer Prize-winning 1993 script offering a tour-de-force role that belongs only in the hands of the highest caliber of actor. Locally the list has included Annette Helde, Billie McBride and Denise Freestone, and Friend clearly belongs in that class.
She carries the piece from start to passionate end as the play’s dual purposes unfold — we learn applications of Donne’s metaphorical “wit,” while Vivian’s intellectual superiority yields to gut- wrenching outbursts of physical pain. Her body rapidly deteriorating from intense chemotherapy, Vivian yields to heretofore elusive grasps of life’s simple pleasures, like Popsicles and basic human kindness.
It’s a capable production, infused by the solid support work from Ben Bonenfant as the robotic young research doctor Jason, and noted area director Gavin Cameron-Webb (the director’s husband) in a rare onstage foray as Vivian’s oncologist.
TheatreWorks is one of the few companies with a transformational space that actually transforms it from play to play, and Roy Ballard’s horizontal stage effectively evokes a narrow hospital corridor.
But the ending is marred threefold: There’s one unfortunate bit of melodrama; a surprise final visit doesn’t pack the kind of emotional payoff it should; and the play’s short “epilogue” is too quick and compromised. Conceived to be a visually transformative, wordless exclamation point on the evening, here many in the audience may have no idea of what it’s supposed to mean.
“Wit” is a lesson in metaphysics, abstraction and paradox . . . and it’s also about poetry. But it’s a simple fact that the more softly you plunge a dagger in, the less deep its penetrations will reach.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Wit” *** (out of four stars)
Drama. Presented by TheatreWorks at the Bon Vivant Theatre, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Colorado Springs. Through Feb. 15. 1 hour, 45 minutes, no intermission. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays. $15-$25. 719-262-3232 or . (Note: brief nudity.)
This weekend’s openings
“As You Like It” Using a cast of just six playing 25 characters, Modern Muse endeavors to tell the tale of Shakespeare’s greatest heroine, Rosalind — the girl who dresses like a boy to teach the boy how to get the girl. Through Feb. 28. Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St., 303-780-7836 or
“Defending the Caveman” Rob Becker’s popular one-man comic exploration of the gender gap, here starring Isaac Lamb. Through March 21. New Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive, 303-309-3773 or
“An Evening With Stephen Sondheim” Songs by the man some regard as the most intelligent and thought-provoking composer of our time. Through Feb. 28. California Actors Theatre, 1250 Hover Drive at the Twin Peaks Mall, Longmont, 303-774-1842 or
“Harvey” Elwood P. Dowd sees rabbits — 6-foot rabbits named Harvey, in Denver native Mary Chase’s classic comedy. Through Feb. 14. Parker Arts Council at the Parker Mainstreet Center, 19650 E. Main St., Parker, 303-841-4500 or
“Richard III” Shakespeare’s history follows the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Britain’s deformed, depraved king. Through Feb. 28. Denver Center Theatre Company at the Stage Theatre, 14th and Curtis streets, 303-893-4100 or
“The Well of the Saints” John Millington Synge (“Playboy of the Western World”) wrote this classic broad comedy with characters exploring the ironies of faith, love and blindness. Through Feb. 6. Germinal Stage-Denver, 2450 W. 44th Ave., 303-455-7108 or
“That Woman Show” After The Avenue birthed the “Girls Only” phenomenon (still going strong at the Denver Center’s Galleria Theatre), producer Robert Wells resolved to stage a women-centric audience-participation lark each winter. This sketch comedy by LuAnn Buckstein and Pamela Clifton includes bits like “I Feel Pretty — at the Gynecologist’s Office.” Through March 15. 417 E. 17th Ave., 303-321-5925 or
Compiled by John Moore
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