A thorny matter of life and death
IN his novels, Don DeLillo often portrays characters in retreat from the world and haunted by thoughts of death. He’s also a playwright, and the central figure in this bleak 90-minute piece, here receiving its UK premiere, is Joe McGann’s haggard Alex, an artist in the American south-west, who’s been reduced by two strokes to a vegetative state. While he’s tended by his fourth wife Lia, his son, Sean, and second wife, Toinette, question the value of keeping him alive.
This conversation develops into a broader one to do with free will and the ways in which society’s advances have created the idea that we have total power over nature. In flashbacks we see a younger, more vigorous Alex, “hooked into” Toinette, who’s given an obsessive intensity by Josie Lawrence. This Alex is passionate about plants, among them the one that gives the play its title — a drooping crimson perennial that thrives in the desert and serves as a rather obvious symbol of tenacity and his edgy, showy existence out on the frontier.
DeLillo can be a fine phrase-maker, but here his characters tend to philosophise drily. Jack McNamara’s production has an austere clarity, and the discussions touch on some interesting questions. Yet it lacks momentum, and the play itself only occasionally flickers with vitality.
⬤ Until Dec 8 (020 3642 6606, the-print-room.org)