Margaret Edson's Wit, Starring Cynthia Nixon, Opens on Broadway

The Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Wit, Tony and Emmy-winning actress Cynthia Nixon, opens January 26 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The first Broadway production of Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is directed by MTC Artistic Director Lynne Meadow. 

A slew of stage and screen stars are expected to attend the opening night performance including Nixon’s Sex and the City co-star Kim Cattrall, Sierra Boggess, Donna Murphy, Walter Bobbie, Mary Catherine Garrison, Jill Eikenberry, Tony Roberts, Carolyn Cantor, Maria Dizzia, Michael Tucker, Matthew Lopez, Davide Auburn, Andre Holland, Adriane Lenix, Richard Maltby, David Ives, Tarell McCraney and Alfred Ehry.

"It’s such an amazing play," Nixon recently told Broadway.com. "It’s exciting. It’s literate. It’s incredibly funny. It’s incredibly moving. It’s just a very theatrical experience."

Wit revolves around brilliant and exacting poetry professor Vivian Bearing (Nixon) as she undergoes experimental treatment for stage-four cancer. A scholar who devoted her life to academia, she must now face the irony and injustice of becoming the subject of research. The role was orignated by Kathleen Chalfant, who won acclaim for her performance in MCC Theater’s 1998 off-Broadway premiere production, directed by the late Derek Anson Jones. Emma Thompson starred as Bearing in the Emmy-winning 2001 HBO film adaptation.

The cast of Wit also includes Pun Bandu as Technician, Suzanne Bertish as E.M. Ashford, Michael Countryman as Harvey Kelekian/Mr. Bearing, Greg Keller as Jason Posner, Carra Patterson as Susie Monahan, Jessica Dickey as Technician, Chiké Johnson as Technician and Zachary Spicer as Technician.