Wit
By Margaret Edson
by Carl F. Gauze
Directed by Selena Ambush
-bb Starring Jeanine Henry, Ryan Christopherson, and Sarah French
-bb Penguin Point Productions
-bb Oviedo, FL
-bf We work all our lives to build something, make a name for ourselves, and changing the world for the better. And where do we end up? Dead in the ground, or waiting for it to happen as they shoot us full of experimental drugs. Vivian (Henry) went to the doctor and ended up with a diagnoses of stage three ovarian cancer. You can play hard ball with your English lit students, but when your cells attack, there is little you can do. Offered the choice of a slow, painful death from cancer, or a slower, longer and still more painful death from medicine, Vivian chose the life of a guinea pig in a teaching hospital. Her nurse Susan (French) cares and helps, offering what little solace available. Dr. Posner (Christopherson,) sees Vivian as a valuable guinea pig, willing to die of poisoning on the off chance he can save someone else later, or at least get a few papers published. Then there’s the intern (Jarman Day ), this guy isn’t fulling accepted in the doctor’s club yet and he wavers between researcher or acting like a human being. Along the way we learned about the intellectual antics of 15th John Dunn and why his cleverness still matters. (Spoiler: in the long run, Death ALWAYS trumps Wit.)
This is a hard-hitting, gut wrenching play that brought the audience to tears again and again. Henry puts on a brave face and revisits what her classes were like in flashbacks. and she fears some of her students might actually be committed to literary analysis of an obscure writer. Dr. Posner takes a more hands on approach. He wants to keep people alive longer, and force them to die from other reasons than cancer. In the long run this is better, but in the short run its as frustrating as teaching English. Vivian delivers the main structure in the show, and even when dead she’s never off stage. The doctors come and go, and sometime double as students, and my takeaway here is no matter how smart or how rich or how dumb you might be, you will someday stare death in the eye, and death will not reply: “Just kidding.”
Penguin Point’s operation continues to expand. While there’s no seat rake making sight lines awkward, the lighting and sound are excellent, and the shopping mall is otherwise an excellent theater space with good parking, rest rooms, and multiple adjacent eateries. Sound is not a problem either, and this operation puts some life into the moribund retail experience. Heavy drama and mall food, all in one convenient location.
