It's time for our weekly visit with Midday theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck, who joins Tom today with her review of Wit, the multi-award-winning one-act play by Margaret Edson that's getting a new, live (and COVID-safe) production at Baltimore's Fells Point Corner Theatre.
Directed by Lindsey R. Barr, and starring Kay-Megan Washington as Dr. Vivian Bearing, Edson's 1995 play explores the intersection of two powerful human experiences: dying, and discovering the profound value of friendship.
Other members of the cast include John Dignam, Vanessa Eskridge, Isaiah Mason Harvey, Kylie Miller, Willem Rogers, Kyla Tacopina and Dana Woodson.
Besides winning the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Wit also earned playwright Margaret Edson the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, and the Oppenheimer Award. In 2001, HBO's TV adaptation of the play, written and directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson, won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Made-for-Television Film.
Wit, which world-premiered in 1995 at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa, California, is 60 year-old Margaret Edson's first and only play, to date. After graduating from Smith College in 1983, Ms. Edson worked as a unit clerk in the AIDS and cancer treatment wing of a research hospital. She later earned her Masters in English Literature at Georgetown University, where she also began her first drafts of Wit. Since graduating from Georgetown in 1992, Ms. Edson has been a public school teacher in Atlanta, Georgia.
Wit continues, live on stage (with no streaming option), atFells Point Corner Theatre until October 24th. Follow the link for information on location, times and ticketing.
