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    Theater Review: Ember Women’s Theatre Starts 2022 Season With Breathtaking ‘Wit’

    Margaret Edson’s Wit (stylized as W;t) is one of the great plays about language, its limits, the danger of identification with your job, and the essential need for human connection, of the last 30 years. It gets a jaw-dropping production, directed by Michelle Batt (with assistant direction from Melissa Bair), courtesy of eMBer Women’s Theatre. 

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    We meet acclaimed literary scholar Vivan Bearing (Susan Wismar), at 50, having just been diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer, with an aggressive, experimental treatment proposed by Dr. Harvey Kelekian (Ian Short), also 50, appealing to her with a similar bemused attitude to students and a similar quest for truth. Kelekian’s fellow, and Bearing’s former student, Jason (Michael Trakas), and primary nurse Susie (Kasey Meininger), both 28, execute that treatment, with an ensemble of Anita McFarren, Kallen Alsdor and Meghan Garber, as other medical students and hospital employees. 

    Bearing leads the audience on a travelogue through eight months of grueling, merciless treatment, slipping between the character reacting to a series of dehumanizing indignities, and the character applying all her teaching skills and rigorous studies, commenting on the situation from a wry remove. Flashbacks fragment and deepen that arc, including meeting her mentor in John Donne studies, Professor E.M. Ashford (Melissa Bair) and Short appearing as Bearing’s father, in the touching scene where she decided words were going to be her life. 

    The degree of specificity in the play is a marvel – I think it was a Lucinda Williams interview around the same time Edson’s play won the Pulitzer, where I first heard and bought into the concept that the specific is universal – and Batt’s direction understands exactly how much breath she and the cast need to give these lines, perfect settings for the right details. She also understands and establishes a sympathetic, almost symbiotic, relationship with Edson’s use of space and silence. The density of information – Wismar dissecting a Donne sonnet before our eyes, the parallel tracks of Short’s relaxed, confident rat-a-tat firing of medical terms, and Wismar trying to parse it into discrete word segments at the same time – flows into space where there’s time for that information to sink into the audience’s skin. 

    From L to R: Meghan Garber (Ensemble) and Anita McFarren (Ensemble), in Wit by Margaret Edson produced by eMBer Women’s Theatre. Photo by Cat McAlpine.

    Bearing is a fascinating character, layers upon layers, a reminder of how the best work (the best art, the best religious thought) holds up and even shines in the light of rigorous intellectual study, and a cautionary tale about the loneliness of applying that rigor to every part of your life, and what we all miss. Wismar takes every single nuance of this character and makes them all sing. She gives us a bravura, tour de force performance – on stage for every minute of the hour-and-forty-minute one act, the eyes through which we see this world – without ever feeling showy or acrobatic. It’s one of the finest performances I’ve ever seen. 

    Short gives his Kelekian an easy-going charm with a steely intellect and wrought-iron ambition underneath, playing with the parallels with Bearing. Meininger digs deep into Susie, proving her as a distinct character while humanizing both the half-formed Jason (given a sharply focused performance by Trakas) and Bearing with warm and crackling chemistry. 

    Wit is a play that still elicits huge laughs – proven the night I went – and keeps its power to devastate, a prime example of the play as a magician who tells you the trick at the outset, then dazzles you with it anyway. My partner and I talked about it for a solid hour over dinner after, excitedly told people about it over drinks on the way home, and I expect this production to be rattling around in my head for a long while. 

    Wit runs through May 21 at Columbus Dance Theater with performances at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For tickets and more information, visit emberwomens.com.

    From L to R: Susan Wismar as Vivian Bearing and Melissa Bair as EM in Wit by Margaret Edson produced by eMBer Women’s Theatre. Photo by Cat McAlpine.
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    Richard Sanford
    Richard Sanfordhttp://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/
    Richard Sanford is a freelance contributor to Columbus Underground covering the city's vibrant theatre scene. You can find him seeking inspiration at a variety of bars, concert halls, performance spaces, museums and galleries.
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