TAC's 'Wit' marked by courageous acting, free Kleenex

Pat Hill deserves to be on the short list for a best actress Elly Award for her complex interpretation of Dr. Vivian Bearing, the main character in the medical drama, "Wit," now at The Acting Company in Yuba City.

Elly Awards are acting and theatrical production honors bestowed annually by the Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Alliance (SARTA). Seven TAC people were nominated for nine Ellys this year. Winners were announced Sept 28. More on that in a minute.

Written by Margaret Edson and directed by Chris Collier, "Wit" is the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about an English Literature professor dying of ovarian cancer.

Professor Bearing is a spinster who has devoted her life to studying and teaching the life and poetical works of John Donne. Consequently, she finds herself facing a slow, certain, agonizing death without friends or relatives.

The most that can be expected from the experimental medical treatments she undergoes might result in some useful clinical to help future cancer victims.

The play traces Bearing's physical decline, which Hill authentically renders in a series of soliloquies delivered at remarkable length in voices that ranged from wry wit to sobbing resignation.

I was impressed that Hill could fully retain and faultlessly deliver the long, complex, memory-taxing lines playwright Edson gave her protagonist. She speaks some 60 to 70 percent of all the words in this 1 hour and 40-minute, no intermissions play.

Other actors didn't have it much easier in "Wit," considering all the long passages of medico lingo being tossed about.

Anthony Dost, playing Dr. Jason Posner, has at least one long segment in which the arcane terminology dominates.

Ditto John Trent playing supervising doctor Harvey Kelekian. There is a scene early on in which he is explaining to Bearing that she has cancer and how it will be treated as she wonders aloud where all this leads.

Two people talking about different things at the same time may seem an easy thing to do in real life where no one listens to others, anyway. However, in acting where one has to concentrate on timing and delivery, it is extremely difficult.

Hill deserves high honors in a role that requires her to shave her head and undergo a (simulated) vaginal examination on a public stage in front of all to see.

There she is clad in naught but a hospital gown and stretched out on an examining table with her legs spread apart and her feet propped up in stainless steel stirrups while Dost pretends to probe her private parts.

If doing that live Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday matinees for the run of the play doesn't prove artistic courage and dedication to the performing arts, I don't know what else might.

Special praise goes to Bonnie Williams who plays Nurse Susie Monahan, a key supporting role. In one longer scene in the later portion of the play she shares Popsicles with Hill who is clearly declining and is soon to give up the ghost.

While doctors Posner and Kelekian may have discussed the medical details with Bearing at length and checked all the boxes on all the forms, they haven't mentioned that death is certain and imminent.

It is Monahan who broaches the subject. Between Popsicle licks, she explains in a factual but kind way that Bearing's options are limited: have her life sustained at all costs, or she can direct that she is not to be resuscitated if and when her vital signs terminate.

Another small — but important — part is that of Janice Reade Hoberg, who plays E.M. Ashford, a history philosopher who once mentored Bearing and who appears at the end of the play as the dying woman's sole visitor.

Bearing is so close to death and there have been some previous scenes depicting past-life recollections it was difficult to tell if Ashford was real or just Bearing's last dream before dying. Either way, it is an effective scene and Hoberg does it well.

The set design by Chris Collier and Kayla Cantrall was simple and realistic. The lighting design by Jim Green was fine, except for a mechanical problem, or two.

If you go to this play, avoid sitting in the back row. A frequently used spotlight is noisy and drowns out some of the dialogue. Those farther front probably would not notice it.

Also, techies had trouble stabilizing an image of a Donne poem projected on the upstage wall. Either fix the problem, or discard the gimmick.

Ah, but those few faults are minor compared to the overall impact of the story and the acting, both of which were proved by the fact that free Kleenex was passed out before the show and some in the audience used them before the show was over.

"Wit" continues at Acting Company, 815 B St., in Yuba City through Oct. 26. Tickets are $15. Shows are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets may be purchased at the door a half hour before show time, or online at actingcompany.org.

John Trent, who played Dr. Kelekian in "Wit," was also one of the seven local stage people nominated for Elly Awards this year. None won at the Sept. 28 event, but just being nominated is a worthy achievement.

Trent was nominated twice for two original youth plays, "Jack" and "Pinocchio."

Also getting two Elly nominations this year was Foster Campbell McManus. She was in the running for best supporting actress in "The Cemetery Club." She was also nominated along with Nancy Perillo for best costumes in a musical for "Pirates of Penzance."

Candee Parker was nominated for best leading actress for her role in the musical "Annie Get Your Gun."

Other Elly nominations this year went to Keegan Alan for child leading actor in "Pinocchio"; Jeff Graham for best adult supporting actor in a youth production of "Jack"; and to Brandon Graham, also for best supporting actor in "Jack."

Award-winning journalist and author Tom Nadeau has written for and acted on stage, screen, radio and television. Write to him at theaterland@gmail.com.