Alex Hauser left New York and gave up easel painting to live and do land art in the south-western desert. Now seventy, he has had his second massive stroke. His young third wife Lia believes that somewhere deep inside his mind is still alive (she wheels his chair to the porch when there are lightning storms), but Alex's ex-wife and son, Toinette and Sean, have come to this remote place to help him die.
Scarlet four o'clock, terminal sedation, night blooming cereus, respiratory depression, sacred datura, persistent vegetative state, love-lies-bleeding, life long devotion - the names of desert flowers and the language of death are equally potent and mysterious in this haunting and urgent play. Sean and Toinette and Lia argue about whether people create the names of plants or discover them, like explorers. And they argue about whether to do a mercy killing or to let Alex be. He's not ready yet, insists Lia.
Like Wit and Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Love Lies Bleeding explores the perilous question of when life ends - or should. It is also a play about a son looking for the father who abandoned him - my job, says Sean, is to know everything he knew. And it is about the odd emotional tenacity of relationships long-ended, about shared language as the antidote to loss.