Valparaiso: A Play

A man sets out on an ordinary business trip to Valparaiso, Indiana. It turns out to be a mock-heroic journey toward identity and transcendence.

This is Don DeLillo's second play, and it is funny, sharp, and deep-reaching. Its characters tend to have needs and desires shaped by the forces of broadcast technology.

This is the way we talk to each other today. This is the way we tell each other things, in public, before listening millions, that we don't dare to say privately.

Nothing is allowed to be unseen. Nothing remains unsaid. And everything melts repeatedly into something else, as if driven by the finger on the TV remote.

This is also a play that makes obsessive poetry out of the language of routine airline announcements and the flow of endless information.

Valparaiso has been performed by the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

I read "Valparaiso" as a sometimes dark satire on television and the culture of instant celebrity. Majeski's story is also a reflection on individuality and free will (or the seeming lack thereof in the modern world). This is a surreal piece that is not, in my opinion, wholly effective, but nonetheless contains some sections with both real bite and pathos.


your culture or mine?   December 19, 2001
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

If you examine Mr. Delillo's body of work as a whole, each piece plays a part in defining his question: Where/how do we find/create meaning in contemporary society?

You (or I, on another day) may disagree with my supposition, and to be fair if his work can be pegged to a central premise, it is likely a tad more subtle and complex, but I think it is a good place to begin.

In Valparaiso, Delillo sends us on a preposterous postmodern journey to god knows where (only here, he situates god knows where in Chile). He grabs the uneasy in each of us and throws it up on the stage. "Here, look at this: Remember how uncomfortable contemporary society can make you? When's the last time you had a meaningful conversation with your spouse? When's the last time you had a meaningful thought?"

Delillo adds depth to the otherwise hackneyed proposal that our `individuality' is merely a creation of our preferences as consumers. His characters here may not reveal their complex inner lives, but one suspects that they may be more than an amalgam of what they buy on Amazon or see on cable.

Sure maybe it's all affectation. Maybe D's being insincere in the way he poses the questions. I don't think so. I think what you'll find is a smartly crafted, mildly apocalyptic tale of suburban dis-ease. If it works well, you should feel a slight nausea at play's end.

Valparaiso is very much worth seeing performed by a smart group of actors. It is also very much worth reading.


The Way We Live Now   May 22, 2001
As other reviewers have noted, it is difficult to judge a work which is essentially a blueprint for an experience in another medium -- and perhaps unfair to judge it by the standards one applies to the medium the author is best known for. Ideally a play should do what *only* a play can do that no other medium can; Delillo understands this. Here his theme of media-saturated alienation finds a heightened, poetic expression, at once more theatrical, more immediate and more accessible than his novels. For those with a little imagination looking for a highly distilled dose of Delillo that really packs a punch, look no further.