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Valparaiso
Don DeLillo

    Don DeLillo is a well established and respected American novelist, a National Book Award winner. His first play, The Day Room, premiered in 1986 at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Later productions appeared in New York, Chicago, and Auckland.) Not until 1999 did Valparaiso, his second play, appear, again at American Repertory Theatre. Chicago's Steppenwolf  Theater produced Valparaiso early in 2000 and Íomhá Ildánach Theatre Company is now presenting the play in Dublin.
    Michael Majeski (Gerry O'Brien), a corporate manager, substitutes for a colleague suffering from a rare disease and embarks on a business trip to Valparaiso, Indiana. But his air ticket and his itinerary list different destinations and Majeski finds himself en route first to Valparaiso, Florida, then to Valparaiso, Chile. The revelation of what happens on the journey is the arching plot device of the play, the story told in bits and pieces - and varying versions - by Majeski, who is catapulted into celebrity by the odd turns of his experience. That it is a journey of more profound meaning is stated from the start:

    Some stranger had crept inside, like surreptitiously, to eat my airline food. Or someone had been superimposed on me, a person with my outline and shoe size but slyly and fundamentally different...Who am I?

Majeski appraises and reappraises his identity (or lack thereof), his relationship with his wife, Livia (Niamh O'Shaughnessy), and their son, all through the device of a series of interviews by newspaper and television journalists - even a documentary filmmaker. DeLillo explores not only the loss of identity, the existential angst of Everyman, but the ways in which the media capitalize on that gaping deficiency, pandering to emotionally needy audiences with invasive and manipulative techniques, even as they hawk their sponsors' products.
    The second act consists entirely of Majeski's appearance with his wife on the talk show of Delfina Treadwell (Emma Lowe), a smarmy Oprah-Springer-Jenny Jones of your worst nightmares, ego-tripping over other people's life disasters. Only here do we learn the outcome of the trip to Valparaiso, as the black comedy twists into a still darker climax and denouement.
    DeLillo frequently uses Pinter-like dialogue - cryptic exchanges concerning events the audience has yet to learn about, questions answered with questions, multiple repetitions of key phrases in a variety of contexts. He is a virtuoso wordsmith, many of his lines rich with multileveled meanings, often of poetic density. If his plotting becomes somewhat schematic, and the eventual outcomes a series of anticlimactic events of more intellectual interest than dramatic credibility, there remains an abundance of complexly explored ideas that are fresh, pointed and challenging.
    The all Irish cast is surprisingly adept and consistent with American accents, only once or twice slipping into non-American pronunciations. The role of Majeski dominates the play and O'Brien's performance skillfully captures the initial confusion of the character, the exposure of the anomie from which he suffers, and his capitulation to the emotional seductions of media celebrity. Emma Lowe, as Delfina Treadwell, is at once ingratiating and threatening, comic and unscrupulous. Niamh O'Shaughnessy has less opportunity with the role of Livia, which is less fully realized in the writing.
    While the production is following the stage instructions of the playwright, its presumed budgetary limitations give it a less sleek look than one might imagine from DeLillo's description in the script. An on-stage television monitor is used, as well as projections, and amplified music and sound effects. The audio is occasionally excruciatingly overloud, and more than once drowns out the Greek chorus that the script employs, knitting the litanies of air travel ("Has anyone had access to your baggage?) to the ideas of the play. The chorus itself comes over poorly due both to choices of its placement on stage and a poor mixture of voices in the delivery of lines.
    As presented here, it is easy to miss the significance of the images on the monitor at the start, in which DeLillo deliberately telescopes a key plot element. Failure to catch that reference surely changes the viewer's response to the unfolding events, particularly the climactic moments of the second act.
    Nonetheless, director John O'Brien and his cast succeed in projecting both the thrust and the subtleties of Valparaiso. It is a play of significant themes and thoughtful, strongly expressed commentary, an ever rarer commodity on the contemporary stage.

    Dublin, August 12, 2000                                              - Arthur Lazere