How does one prepare oneself for imminent death in this American age of leisure, faithlessness, and futile striving for identity? "A Gift of Time," Garson Kanin's adaptation of Lael Wertenbaker's biographical account of her husband's final cancer-ridden months ("Death of a Man"), presents such a case….

Unfortunately his decision to live each day "an hour a minute" until the moment when he will have to become bed-ridden, and then to cut his wrists, is never very thoroughly examined or challenged by the doctors, by his friends, or by his wife.

Thus the play becomes merely a demonstration of a sensible process agreed upon from the start. And there is an inevitable unsatisfactoriness to an endless parade of scenes in which courage must be represented as small talk in the face of gravity. In the last act the pattern changes somewhat as Charles keeps summing up his life and...