Love-Lies-Bleeding at Steppenwolf Theatre

Chicago Tribune - Recommended

"...Amy Morton's production is an apt match for this script -- a high compliment. Despite being stuck in the woefully underwritten part of prestroke Alex, John Heard is especially good. This well-known movie actor is a fascinating, Clintonian actor, who dances deliciously on the knife's edge between intellectual sophistication and old-fashioned sleaze. In a play in danger of debating itself to death, his articulate inarticulation adds badly needed humanity."

Chicago Sun Times - Somewhat Recommended

"...DeLillo gives us a weave of meditative monologues and scenes suggesting much about the complicated man Alex was when he was still at the height of his powers (and whose work on light-filled rock caves is reminiscent of earthworks artist James Turrell). He also conjures a good picture of the people Alex has both loved and abused, and how they are now returning the favor. Occasionally, the dialogue becomes too self-consciously literary."

SouthtownStar - Not Recommended

"...Although the play is directed with a sure hand by Amy Morton, it has so many problems and is so tedious that even at only 1 hour and 25 minutes, it seems to go on way too long."

Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended

"...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."

Time Out Chicago - Not Recommended

"...At first glance, Bleeding's primary stumbling block is the playwright's day job. As a celbrated American novelist, DeLillo's expansive prose expertly describes characters and events; we need him instead to dramatize them, to set them in motion in front of us. In his mostly actionless, endlessly speechifying text, we're ironically kept at an emotional arm's length by characters who describe their emotions in painstaking detail."

ChicagoCritic - Recommended

"...Despite the lack of enduring dramatic conflict, Love-Lies-Bleeding contains a stimulating take on the dilemma of euthanasia and what constitutes a “good death.” The question of how do you let a loved one die with dignity?"

Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended

"...Playwright Don DeLillo takes an intelligent if strangely cool approach to an issue we have all grappled with, especially in the light of the recent Terri Schiavo case. The play is worth seeing for its valid discussion of life and death issues and for two strong performances by Martha Lavey and Penelope Walker. That is not to say that there aren't some deep flaws on the Upstairs Steppenwolf stage, some intrinsic to the writing and others to the production itself."