The AndyGram - Broadway Theatre Reviews and Commentary

Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize winning play, Wit was originally produced in 1995 at South Coast Repertory Company in Costa Mesa, California and then off-Broadway.  This new production, being presented by Manhattan Theater Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, marks the play's Broadway premiere.

Victoria Bearing is a professor of English literature with a focus on the English poet, John Donne.  She has also been diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer.  Bearing is alone in the world.  She has chosen a life of solitude and protects it with a harsh veneer of wit.  She wears it like a suit of armor, which she builds with snide asides and an air of intellectual superiority.

The Road to Meccais a long, tedious one.  As directed by Gordon Edelstein, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Athol Fugard’s 1987 play is a dirge.  Despite the presence of two theatrical heavyweights, Rosemary Harris and Jim Dale, this slow and meandering piece doesn’t begin to get interesting until about two thirds of the way through the second act.