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• "Love-Lies-Bleeding"

Playwright Don DeLillo's "Love-Lies-Bleeding" is a world premiere production of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. After its local run, the production is heading to Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center in mid-June. While a love-lies-bleeding is a perennial plant called an amaranth, which contains spikes of crimson flowers, Webster's dictionary notes that amaranths are also known as imaginary flowers that never die. This title is somewhat ironically appropriate for this strange little play.

Directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Amy Norton, she and her cast try to pump life into an hour and a half play that seems to have minimal dramatic arc and only mildly interesting characters. "Love-Lies-Bleeding" treads similar territory as the popular Brian Clark play "Whose Life is It Anyway?" from the 1970s. Except, instead of the central character being an artist who wishes his own mercy killing after a debilitating car accident, DeLillo's central character Alex is an elderly artist who's suffered a stroke which has left him in a persistent vegetative state and in constant care by his wife and son.

Three fine actors keep this rather slim script from mediocrity, as the cast explores not only the reasons why loved ones wish to see a once creative man die, while episodic flashback scenes explore the artist's past, troubled family relationships and even bits of his memorial. Along the way, not so profound discussions of life and living according to one's calling are interwoven with bits of dark humor, cynical insights and moments of true love expressed. The play is most interesting when it explores the question of whether the "mercy" and "peace" offered by euthanasia is more necessary for the victim or the victim's caretakers.

Veteran Hollywood character actor John Heard is appropriately rustic and casually believable as the middle aged Alex. Long one of the most underappreciated of actors - note Heard's memorable roles in '70s-'80s cult films "Cutter's Way, "Heart Beat," and "After Hours" to reoccurring television roles in "CSI Miami" and Prison Break," - Heard provides audiences with a real close-up way to rightly appreciate his skills. The Steppenwolf's artistic director and ensemble veteran Martha Lavey's Toinette, the ex-wife role, has the rich assertiveness and graceful demeanor of a young Lauren Bacall. She's always so interesting to watch. And Penelope Walker's Lia, the present wife, and soon to be widow, is compassionately soft and while probably loving Alex the most, brings out the true humanity of the play's message.

"Love-Lies-Bleeding" continues at the Steppenwolf's smaller upstairs stage until May 28 at 1650 North Halsted in Chicago. For ticket information contact the box office at 312-335-1650 or go online at www.steppenwolf.org.