Review: LOVE-LIES-BLEEDING, The Print Room

In a deserted part of the American south-west, Alex (Joe McGann) is being tended to by his loving fourth wife Lia (Clara Indrani). Once a successful artist, he was rendered speechless and motionless by a stroke. His only son Sean (Jack Wilkinson) and his second spouse Toinette (Josie Lawrence) arrive to convince his new wife to agree to terminate his life.

Jack McNamara directs the UK premiere of acclaimed author Don DeLillo's Love-Lies-Bleeding. Whereas DeLillo's body of work has won him various awards, the play is a rather shallow exploration of a hot subject which becomes the scapegoat to talk about a dysfunctional family.

The characters themselves are rather messy. Sean is obsessed with his distant father, from wanting to learn everything he knew to asking his ex-stepmother about his sex style. As portrayed by Wilkinson with ticks and a bizarre fascination with euthanasia itself, he is too many times reduced to a quite puerile caricature.

Indrani's Lia puts up a fight to keep her husband alive but changes her mind all of a sudden, giving very feeble hints of what happened inside her. Toinette is by far the most complex role in the show and, as played by Lawrence, is certainly the most interesting. Complicated and conflicted, the actress truly shows her colours when she gets to play a younger Toinette.

The constant back-and-forth in the timeline doesn't help to settle the story. Colder lights (curated by Azusa Ono) implicate a rougher and more hands-on reflection on the meanings of life and death while warmer tones suggest the familial politics of the plot. The set is the real centrepiece of the production.

Lily Arnold covers the stage of the Print Room with sand, making it pour out of the niches at its sides. A wide, shiny wooden deck holds very hygge furniture and a tall wall in the same style of the platform with a large mirror. This hides a massive box of sorts which hosts some of the action but is mainly used as a screen.

The exquisite and lavish design doesn't however camouflage the rather unpolished direction, which culminates with an abrupt and rushed ending. Unfortunately, Love-Lies-Bleeding fails to give a well-rounded analysis of its subject matter, choosing to settle on family drama instead.

Love-Lies-Bleeding runs at The Print Room until 8 December.

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