Chicago Bleeder

Don DeLillo's latest play, Love-Lies-Bleeding, is opening soon in Chicago. An AP story gave this rundown on his previous theatrical endeavors:

In 1987, a dismayed Frank Rich of The New York Times compared "The Day Room," DeLillo's first play, to "`One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' as it might be rewritten by a pretentious undergraduate who has just completed the midterm."

A decade later, the Times' Peter Marks found "Valparaiso" to be "flawed and only mildly provocative."

Ed Park of The Village Voice was more impressed, saying the play reaffirmed DeLillo as a spokesman for "our American magic and dread."


(Of course, "American magic and dread" isn't my own formulation—it's from White Noise.)