Playwright: Don DeLillo
At: Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Phone: ( 312 ) 335-1650; $20-$60
Runs through: May 28
By Jonathan Abarbanel
There's much to admire but little to like about Love-Lies-Bleeding. One admires author Don DeLillo's heightened language; it's not Tennessee Williams poetic, but rich in image and phrase, a series of little speeches rather than conversation. 'We had seen the last of our living, breathing days and nights,' a woman intones about her ex-husband. 'You were fixed forever within yourself, I was an intrusion,' a son says to his dying father. It's artificial yet pungent.
One admires DeLillo's intellectual ambition wrestling with love, relationship and death. His topics are commonplace, but his treatment is complex as he creates a trio of characters who see their reflections in Alex, a dying artist living in rustic comfort in the Southwest. Alex is in a persistent vegetative state after two strokes, cared for by his fourth wife, the much-younger Lia. Alex's adult son, Sean, and second wife, Toinette, have come to help Alex have a good death and, not incidentally, to hasten that death. A younger, healthier Alex appears in some scenes as the older Alex languishes unspeaking in a wheelchair. Superficially, Love-Lies-Bleeding is about euthanasia, but it's not really. Mercy killing is merely a catalyst.
For callow and creepy Sean ( Louis Cancelmi ) , his father can't kick quickly enough. Sean values only his own suffering, as he sees it, at the hands of a distant father. Lia ( Penelope Walker ) is the polar opposite, concerned only with Alex's suffering. 'I failed him at the end,' she says. 'He could have gone on. I couldn't.' The play's journey belongs to ex-wife Toinette ( Martha Lavey ) , initially cynical, who comes to realize she still loves Alex.
Directed by Amy Morton, an artist moving from strength to strength, the players also are admirable. Lavey has charisma in a clever, svelte, stylish Diana Vreeland way. Cancelmi plays beyond his alabaster good looks as the cretinous son. Walker is sympathetic in the play's blandest role. John Heard as younger Alex has casual appeal. Larry Kucharik is dying Alex, the living lump one never can ignore completely.
For all that's admirable, Love-Lies-Bleeding—the common name of a plant with spiky red flowers—is uncomfortable to watch. No character is completely likeable—not even Lia, who's just too passive. Even Alex, essentially a neutral figure, is acknowledged by the others to have been self-absorbed and emotionally aloof. And for me, DeLillo never completes Toinette's emotional journey. The play comes to a stop rather than to an end. It's also a challenge for anyone who's cared for someone dying slowly. We're not used to seeing helpless illness graphically—sometimes callously—portrayed. In short, Love-Lies-Bleeding has quality and even some truth, but little charm. Citing one of the play's metaphors, it doesn't fully light the vast space it occupies. Still, one admires the attempt.