Marsha Wagner, Islander, Week of March 23-29. 2001

Theatre in Fort Myers Comes of Age

'It was a daring move for Producing Director Robert Cacioppo to bring Margaret Edson's powerful Pulitzer Prize-winning play, 'W;i' to the Florida Rep. And his daring has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Not only has it geometrically increased Florida Rep's reputation, this skillful production has elevated the theatre to the highest level of artistic excellence. The performance rights, recently released for regional theatre production, were limited to only 30 preeminent professional theatres, of which Florida Rep became one. Last week's stunning production proved that this theatre company has certainly earned the right to this honor.

Wit n: The natural ability to perceive or know; intelligence. 2. Usually plural. a. keenness of perception of discernment; ingenuity. b. sound mental faculties; sanity 3. a. the ability to perceive and express in an ingeniously humorous manner the relationship or similarity between seemingly incongruous or disparate things. b. one noted for this ability, especially one skilled in repartee. To keep one's wits about one. To remain calm and analytical, especially in a crisis.

Wit has been aptly named. The play fits all of the above definitions, deftly employing word play through the 90 minute production. Edson's magnificent first play centers around Dr. Vivian Bearing ( Kim Crow), a brilliant professor of English literature, scholar of John Donne's Holy Sonnets, and ovarian cancer victim. Diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer, Vivian agrees to do battle with the disease and become part of a research project. She figures that the researchers' quest for knowledge is similar to her own.

Wit is just as compelling in its observation of how Bearing has lived her life. She fell in love with words at her father's knee and has maintained this all-consuming, passionate relationship with literature ever since. She who once relished in the mind games (the 'wit') of Donne's metaphysical Holy Sonnets, finds that language can no longer shield her from the realities of her existence. Donne's wit focuses on life, death and God; he uses wit to measure how good you really are. Edson, like Donne, uses words to evoke thought, thoughts that transform into emotion.

Dr. Vivian Bearing is every teacher you've ever dreaded, the no-nonsense detail fanatic, who turned out to be the one from whom you learned the most ( mine was Sister Inez, 7th Grade English). Bearing uses her wit as a form of weapon (rapier wit), a defense to skewer pompous, uncaring doctors and hopeless situations. Words become protective, since her hospital gown and baseball cap offer no protection against a body that has turned into her enemy and a cure that is worse than the disease.

The professor's personal portrait seques into Edson's final theme, a comment on the coldness of modern research medicine. Bearing agrees to experimental chemotherapy, as encouraged by her oncologist, Dr. HArvey Kelekian ( excellently played by Niels Miller.) She then encounters Jason Posner, MD, facetiously well-played by Greg Longenhagen. He is a former A English student) of hers, no less) who is now research fellow ( with an F in bedside manner) for Kelekian and in charge of Bearing's case.

During the treatments, Bearing suffers alone, without friends to help her endure the pain. Donne's poems remain her only friends. A tender deathbed visit from E. M. Ashford, PhD, her college mentor, touchingly played by the capable Jane Bushway, and fleeting approval for the kindness of her charge nurse, Susie Monahan (Stephanie Davis), are her only references to compassion and kindness from or for others. As Monahan, Davis once again shows her mettle as an actress, going deep within herself and flshing out an amazing amount of richness for her character.

Sarasota actress Kim Crow as Dr. Bearing is a transcendent artist and consummate performer. She gives a performance of such power and depth, it takes your breath away. This is a role that demands 100-percent-plus from any actress who tackles it--from the red baseball cap that covers her hairless head to the hospital gowns that cover her naked body. And anyone playing this role is laid emotionally bare as well.

The incomparable Crow brings this kind of commitment to the part, revealing the very essence of her being as she shares her inner self with the audience. She plays the audience's emotions like an instrument. taking us exactly where she wants us, making us feel precisely what she wants us to feel. We believe her, we share her wit, her pain, her courage and, eventually her death. This is a gut-wrenching performance for both the actor and the audience -- an evening you will never forget.

Pamela Hunt's directionis fluid, highspeed -- capturing the inhuman pace of hospital life where timing is a matter of life, death, and cold efficiency.

Scenid desgner Laurance Imbert has created an antiseptic, green-box world, that looks much like anyhospital of old memory. It is chilling, centered on an electric clock ticking the hours, propelling time as well as action to an end.

The lighting by Annmarie Diggan isa perfect partner -- harsh, inhuamn, cold and hospital-scary. The orginal music and sound design by David VanTieghem added not only the element of time ticking away, but also an excrusiating physicality to the horrendous treatments and unbearable pain Bearing was enduring.

This is truly an incredible play that cuts to the quick. It is a roller-coaster ride of emotions sparked by deep thought, intelligent humor, literary mind games, metaphysical wit. And it achieves what very few palys manage to do -- makes you feel and makes you think. Thank you, Robert, for having the boldness to bring us this kind of world-class theatrer in a first-rate production with an astonishing cast of fine actors. BRAVO!!