By Anne Federwisch, OTR
Book cover courtesy of Faber and Faber Inc.
June 17, 1999

“Wit”—a clever, humorous, and touching play about a woman’s struggle with death and the medical system—won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for drama this year. But you may not find health professionals applauding its portrayal of clinicians. Among the insensitive hospital staff, only the nurse—Susie Monahan, RN—shines through as a compassionate patient advocate. Unfortunately, the character is also referred to as “never very sharp to begin with.”

Kindergarten teacher Margaret Edson penned the play. Before beginning her teaching career, she worked in the cancer and AIDS units of a research hospital as a unit clerk and a physical therapy aide.

“Wit” chronicles the final months of Vivian Bearing’s fight with terminal ovarian cancer as she undergoes an experimental regimen of chemotherapy. She is an esteemed professor of 17th century poetry, specializing in the sonnets of John Donne. The story takes place at University Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center, with frequent flashbacks to other scenes in Bearing’s life.

The play dazzles with Bearing’s humorous asides to the audience. “It’s not my intention to give away the plot,” she says in her opening lines, bedecked in a baseball cap and two hospital gowns, “but I think I die at the end.”
At one point, she explains that she needs to be in protective isolation. “In my present condition, every living thing is a health hazard to me,” she confides to the audience as her physicians gown up, “particularly healthcare professionals.”

Clinicians’ indifference

The author skillfully blends literary references to Donne’s poems throughout the work. In a telling flashback, Bearing and her beloved mentor argue over the punctuation in the last line of “Death, be not proud.” A misplaced semicolon in a poorly edited version changes the meaning of the poem, her mentor contends, because there is no barrier between life and death as significant as a semicolon. “Nothing but a breath—a comma—separates life from life everlasting,” her mentor insists.

That opinion also is reflected in the attitude of most of the health professionals in the play. The clinicians usually treat Bearing as if she were a mere a punctuation mark on their caseload before she dies. While none of the hospital staff comes across as cruel, they generally are indifferent toward the patient—just as Bearing was toward her students in her healthier life.

The resident laments that dealing with patients is a colossal waste of time on his road to becoming a brilliant researcher. Both he and Bearing’s primary physician view her principally as a research specimen. The allied health technicians tolerate her as something to do between breaks. Only Monahan, the nurse, treats Bearing as a unique individual grappling with the most difficult phase of her life.

Yet Monahan is not regarded highly by the physicians. Her suggestions for treatment are often trivialized, and the code team pushes her aside as superfluous. And although Bearing prizes Monahan’s kindness and compassion, the professor does not think the nurse is very bright.

A nurse’s reaction

Although Monahan eventually prevails as the hero, in the beginning of the play she seems coquettish. Lyn Goldsmith, RN, a New York City nurse who saw “Wit,” said, “For such a smart play to portray the soap opera version of the flirty, coy nurse was unfortunate.”
Overall, though, Goldsmith enjoyed the show. “The script was inspired. Vivian’s reactions were so genuine, and so humanized her even as she shielded herself with her intellect.”

But Goldsmith thought the medical personnel’s lines fell flat. “They seemed cartoonish to me and their dialog was stilted and unnatural.” She found it surprising that none of the many reviews she read of “Wit” mentioned the role of the nurse and physicians as offensively stereotyped.
Goldsmith did gain insight from at least one of the drama’s jabs at nurses, though. She said, “I swore [after seeing ‘Wit’] I would never call a patient ‘sweetheart’ ever again!”