SOURCE: Phillips, Abraham. “Cancer Patient.” JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association 283, no. 24 (28 June 2000): 3261.

In the following review, Phillips, a medical doctor, judges Wit as “brilliant” despite its critical indictment of both the academic and medical professions.

The play Wit is an engaging and absorbing drama about a cancer patient as she experiences established practices in medicine. The protagonist, Vivian Bearing, PhD (Judith Light), is a renowned professor of English. In her own assessment she has made major contributions to our understanding of the metaphysical poet John Donne and his Holy Sonnets. From such exalted heights she is thrust into an entirely new world of hospitals, physicians, and chemotherapy, when she is diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. Initially, her approach to her illness is rational and probing, though mixed with cynical responses to the situation that she is pushed into by current medical practices. Without much choice...