At some stage in the rehearsal process for this misguided venture, some bright spark decided to site a desk lamp on stage. Not competing with the stage lights, you understand a 100W bulb would strive rather ineffectively to add its weight to the cause but pointing towards the audience. One can only assume that we might be assumed uncomfortable sitting in the dark, but glinting in the low-level fluorescence of the hospital isolation ward it simply induces a headache, and renders the stage unwatchable for longer than thirty seconds at a time. The lamp, of course, is a symbol, and not merely of infelicitous staging when you know that Wit covers the last hours of Vivian Bearings life, you can guess the rest. Wit has a proud history: Margaret Edsons play premiered in California in 1995, and later won the Pulitzer Prize. Its sensitive treatment of Bearings death from ovarian cancer, and the interweaving of the poetry of John Donne Bearings academic speciality drew critical and intellectual acclaim in equal measure, and the play is often cited as an exemplar of theatre which blends raw emotion and cool intellect, powerful yet thoughtful in creating an intelligent narrative with a visceral punch. In this staging from First Person Productions, though, the stumbling symbolism of the desk lamp invades the entire play. The efficacy of Bearings character depends upon an arc of light and shade, as in her final hours she reflects upon an unexamined life lived vicariously through the words of John Donne. In her fear she feels regret at her isolation in the ivory towers of academia, and in her loneliness her steadfastness begins to buckle. Our sympathy for Bearing relies upon our double response, but here she is played on a single note of forthright obduracy. Some peculiar phrasings and intonations distract from our immersion in Bearings world: her treatment is de-grading, as if she were a term paper recalled to be unmarked, and her response to the nurses observation that she has not received many visitors none to be precise toys with its stress before apparently commissioning an array of inaccurate estimates. Shortly after strophes becomes monosyllabic, it is difficult to suppress a guffaw when we are told that Bearing, at five years old, realised that words would be her life: words here are the sticks with which we are bludgeoned into submission. The puppy-like energy of the supporting cast with the notable exception of Bearings nurse Susie is jarring, and the play is delivered at such breakneck speed that the addition of slamming doors would render it farce. Wit is a challenging piece, demanding in its relentlessness a subtlety and sensitivity that proves beyond these young actors, leaving a disjointed piece that could have benefitted from a keener and more critical directorial eye.
