SOURCE: Renner, Pamela. “Science and Sensibility.” American Theatre 16, no. 4 (April 1999): 34-6.

In the following review of Wit, Renner favorably assesses Edson's ability to realistically portray the medical establishment.

Medical science to the unwary can seem like a genie, able to grant human beings their most desperate wishes—children to the childless, beauty to the homely, health to the hopelessly ill. Like every genie we invent, however, it can be counted upon to fail us in times of greatest need.

Playwrights Margaret Edson (Wit) and Lisa Loomer (Expecting Isabel and The Waiting Room, among other plays) are far from unwary. Both, in fact, are penetrating witnesses to extreme rites, impassioned observers able to coax astonished laughter from audiences confronted with tragic circumstance. Wit and The Waiting Room are dramas of mortality set in the harsh amphitheatre of the modern research hospital. Both Edson and Loomer sprinkle their dialogue liberally...