Daily Herald
- Highly Recommended
"...Pairing emotionally shattering scenes with comedic asides, Edson achieves an artful balance of humor and heartbreak in the play, which unfolds on Courtney O'Neill's minimal, clinical set as a series of vignettes dramatizing the professor's intellectual evolution and her physical decline. Over the intermissionless 90 minutes, we glimpse Vivian at her father's knee where her love of language begins; in her classroom where she rightfully earns her reputation as a tough teacher; in the examining room where she is reduced to a specimen for research purposes; and in her hospital bed where she finally experiences a bit of grace."
Chicago Reader
- Recommended
"...Margaret Edson's brilliant piece--about a woman with ovarian cancer, confronting (and occasionally denying) her doubts, fears, and humiliation--avoids mawkish tearjerking. John Gawlik's staging for the Gift Theatre doesn't always bring out the colors in Edson's crystalline writing--and despite a game performance, Alexandra Main could use a few more flashes of existential dread as Vivian Bearing, the waspish John Donne scholar-turned-chemotherapy lab rat. But underrealized moments not withstanding, this remains a smart, unsentimental take on confronting the end of the mortal coil."
Chicago Free Press
- Highly Recommended
"...Exhilarating and dense, this work of art functions simultaneously on many levels. Fundamentally, it’s a most sincere, deeply human tearjerker—full of contradictions, sadness and hope. When performed well, Edson’s words can make you cry despite her protagonist’s insistence that you shouldn’t. Whether or not you wipe tears from your cheeks, nobody who experiences The Gift’s “Wit” will leave the theater unmoved."
EpochTimes
- Recommended
"...In a sterling performance by Alexandra Main, Vivian is the primary focus of the story and won my heart over as she unfolded her history since the discovery of Cancer. She greets us with some explanation about this question and more, clad in a hospital gown and walking along the stage with an IV on a wheel rack alongside her."
Centerstage
- Recommended
"...In writing the 95-minute show, Edson made a number of gutsy choices, in effect showing trust in her audience's intellectual capacity. She broke the fourth wall, allowing Vivian to address the audience and served up an academic stew of medical terminology and 17th century metaphysical poetry. Most significantly, she wrote a witty play about cancer. Any of these choices could have derailed 'W;t,' but Edson's command of her material, not to mention director Jown Gawlik's capable execution, kept the play smoothly on track."
Time Out Chicago
- Recommended
"...Gift has crafted not an instructive tale of how to live life—Vivian is often downright unlikable—but, from its acidic beginning to its incandescent end, a story about vitality and control, and the loss—unavoidable for all of us—of both."
