Siempreviva

Born in the Bronx into an Italian Catholic family, Don DeLillo (1936) is one of the United States’ most important living novelists. A confessed admirer of Norman Mailer, Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard, from them he drew his style, the psychological analysis of the individual and the observation of his moral condition, the critical look at contemporary society, and the use of a unique sense of humour that sometimes relaxes its grip and other times tightens it.

The title Siempreviva [Sempervivum], the common name of the flower referred to in the original Love-Lies-Bleeding, represents a macabre wink to an oft-recurring theme in the author’s work: death in contemporary society. On this occasion, in the form of a moral debate, it is handled as way of approaching the issue of assisted suicide and the moment when life ceases to have meaning.

The characters are gathered around Alex Macklin, a successful artist who, at 70, is close to death and in a permanent vegetative state. The other characters will decide his fate: Lia, his young wife, whose intention is to allow him to have a natural death; and his ex-wife Toinette and son Sean, who want to help him leave the world with dignity, believing that he would not have wanted to end his days intubated this way.

A family that confronts a dilemma that, seen up close, where old conflicts and created interests intersect, is not so much about euthanasia as it is about emotional dependency, loyalty and love in the lives of these disillusioned characters.

One of the characters asks us, “When does an act of tenderness turn into an obsession, something that is even abnormal, to a certain extent sick?” Don DeLillo's plays, like his novels, take us to an uncomfortable place that leaves no-one indifferent. No doubt about it.
Salva Bolta