Directed by MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow, the play continues a limited engagement to March 11.
Joining Tony and Emmy Award winner Nixon ("Sex and the City," Rabbit Hole) are Pun Bandhu (Technician), Olivier Award winner Suzanne Bertish (E.M. Ashford), Michael Countryman (Harvey Kelekian/Mr. Bearing), Jessica Dickey (Technician), Chiké Johnson (Technician), Greg Keller (Jason Posner), Carra Patterson (Susie Monahan) and Zachary Spicer (Technician).
Wit, according to MTC, "follows a brilliant and exacting poetry professor (Tony and Emmy Award winner Cynthia Nixon) as she undergoes experimental treatment for cancer. A scholar who devoted her life to academia, she must now face the irony and injustice of becoming the subject of research."
The play had its New York premiere in 1998 receiving universal acclaim and ran Off-Broadway for over 500 performances. It was the most-honored play of the season garnering the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was named Best Play by the New York Drama Critics Circle, the Drama Desk Awards, the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Drama League, and the Lucille Lortel Awards. This is Edson's only play. Even at the height of her fame, she said she had no wish to pursue a playwriting career. Her career is teaching elementary school students.
Like Meadow, Nixon is a breast cancer survivor. Her cancer was discovered when she was 40. "It was," she said, "a totally routine examination. What the guy who read the film said was, 'You know, it's so small. I really wouldn't have thought anything of it, but it wasn't on the previous year's mammogram.' I started getting mammograms at 35 because my mother had breast cancer twice. I'm so lucky I didn't start at 40. They wouldn't have noticed it for another year, and who knows how much more advanced it would have been?"
The creative team for the Broadway production includes Santo Loquasto (scenic design), Jennifer von Mayrhauser (costume design), Peter Kaczorowski (lighting design) and Jill BC Du Boff (sound design).
Tickets, priced $57-$116, are available by calling (212) 239-6200, online by visiting www.Telecharge.com or by visiting the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre Box Office (261 W. 47th Street).
For more information visit www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com.
