If a person wishes to die, should they have that right?  Should lawyers, judges or doctors, who can only know secondhand what that person is going through, be allowed to deny them that right?

Is it the responsibility of a doctor to preserve life even when the quality of life is so diminished that living becomes sheer torture?

These are difficult questions to answer. But they also are difficult to ask, at least in a play, without resorting to preaching and self-indulgence, let alone being funny at the same time.

Oyster Mill Playhouse's newest production, "Whose Life is it Anyway?" directed by Marcie Warner and penned by Tony Award-nominee Brian Clark, succeeds through a delectable wit and a wonderful performance from the leading lady.

Lisa Budwig plays Claire Harrison, an art teacher and sculptor who finds herself unable to create, or indeed even move, after a car accident leaves her in a hospital bed paralyzed from the neck down.

Although she succeeds in charming the hospital staff with her razor-sharp wit ("I'm not sure how to take this," she tells one nurse. "Well, lying down I suppose."), Budwig finds that her new life is not much of a life at all and soon declares her desire to end it.

But when the hospital's overseer, Dr. Emerson (Tony Pingitore), proves determined to preserve her life despite her wishes, Claire decides to get the courts involved with the help of her attorney (Melissa Markovic) and a sympathetic doctor (Mark Kopcho).

Bedridden for the entire show, Budwig achieves the difficult task of creating a true character while remaining almost entirely motionless.  Her voice, vaguely reminiscent of Katharine Hepburn, conveys a smarm, a sarcasm, even a sexiness that personifies the wit that elevates this play to the level it reaches.

Budwig is not only good with the jokes ("Going down... orthopedics, gynecology and ladies underwear" she quips as a nurse lowers her bed in elevator fashion), she also conveys a mastery of her character.

If the play falters anywhere, it is in answering its questions too definitively; a little more ambiguity might have gone a long way.

If the production falters, it is with the performance of Pingitore, who, as Budwig's antagonist, did not evoke the powerful emotions he was meant to convey.

But Budwig's acting and dialogue were so absorbing that such a glitch was a minor distraction.

"Whose Life is it Anyway?" will entertain you, even as it asks you to consider a far from simple subject.