Nurse turns terminal patient in Wit

MURRAY WILSON/Manawatu Standard

FINALE: MidCentral Health nurse Gael Haining Ede will be playing the lead role in Pulitzer prize-winning play Wit, at the Globe Theatre in Palmerston North until Sunday.

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She has nursed the dying through their last moments and this week Gael Haining Ede will be fighting a very public battle with ovarian cancer.

The MidCentral Health nurse is playing the lead role in Wit, a Pulitzer prize-winning script about a woman who is living out her last days with cancer.

It's a switch of roles for Mrs Haining Ede, who has become acquainted with many patients who have suffered terminal illnesses – but never experienced what it might be like to suffer from one herself.

"As a nurse you constantly have to deal with it, and your heart breaks every day, and I've often thought that the day your heart doesn't break is the day you have to leave, because you don't care anymore," she said.

"It's interesting to play someone on the other side of it."

Her character, Vivian Bearing, is a prickly English professor who only realises she has shut warmth out of her life when she's on her deathbed.

But the tumultuous emotions she feels when faced with death are typical of anyone, Mrs Haining Ede said.

"She personifies every one of us really, when we are looking at our lives and how we live them when we're facing death, which we all do.

"The initial reaction is `oh God, why would I want to see that?' or `why would I want to be in a play about that?', but the play is so witty and funny and clever, it's about facing life and facing death."

Director Damian Thorne said he had been wanting to stage Wit since watching the movie adaptation some years ago.

"It's just amazing ... not a lot moves me, and I was very moved," he said.

A cast of eight will support Mrs Haining Ede, including Globe Theatre chairman Stephen Fisher, and local actors Hannah Pratt and Phil Anstis.

A quota of tickets have been given to Canteen and Arohanui Hospice, who are selling them as fundraisers.

Wit was written by American playwright Margaret Edson, who drew on her work experience in a hospital for the play. It won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 1999.

Wit opens at the Globe Theatre tonight at 7.30pm, and runs every night until Sunday at 4pm. Tickets from Centrepoint.

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