It has been said that to win over an audience, you have to make them laugh as well as cry; Margaret Edson’s “WIT” does exactly that.
The City College Theatre Group has put on yet another masterpiece, thanks to a brilliant, perfectly chosen cast and Rick Mokler, a director whose reputation precedes him.
The story of “WIT” is of Vivian Bearing, a professor specializing in 17th-century English literature, and more specifically in the work of John Donne. Bearing, played by Allison Coutts-Jordan, discovers she has stage four ovarian cancer, and as she points out early in the play, there is no stage five.
The play begins shortly after she discovers she has cancer, and as she begins an intense treatment of chemotherapy.
Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about Bearing before she was restricted to a hospital bed. We travel back to her childhood, to her academic career when she tortured her students with the complexities of Donne.
Bearing is an instantly likeable character, even if her sense of humor is a little dry and rather cynical. She is reminiscent of all those college professors who made you read complex poetry and then analyze it to the point where the only word out of your mouth was an incoherent “huh?”
She has a fantastic opening monologue in which she warms the audience to her character, and numerous times in the play she will turn to the audience to deliver a witty one-liner or snide comment.
Her doctor, Harvey Kelekian (Radu Azdril), is a pleasant, but pushy character who, while being sympathetic to Bearing’s pain, is insistent on gaining the numbers he needs for his ongoing cancer research.
The other doctor, Jason Posner (Randy Singer), on the other hand, is a completely different creature. Jason is completely insensitive to Bearing and her pain. He finds even the most basic of greetings or thanks a chore that he must only follow because it is medical protocol.
One of the reasons Posner works so well as a character is because he is disconnected from the human beings on whom he works, fascinated instead by cancer cells in a laboratory.
The other reason is Susie Monahan, played impeccably by Jennifer Shepard. Monahan is a nurse who, unlike her male supervisors, does everything she can to make Bearing feel as comfortable and loved as possible.
Monahan is not a genius, but she has a good heart and becomes the friend Vivian never had.
The pair of them have some great moments together, from a heart-wrenching scene of Vivian in tears and wailing in pain, to the comfort of them sharing popsicles and chatting about their childhood.
While the play is essentially about death, it is also about life, and has some very life -affirming qualities to it. It is a fantastic piece of work, the characters and actors are perfect and it fully deserves every bit of praise it receives.