One flashy observation that can immediately be made about Days of Wine and Roses is: Brian d’Arcy James as Joe Clay and Kelli O’Hara as Kirsten Arnesen have never been seen quite like this before, and surely never better. They’re the despairing alcoholics in the Adam Guettel-Craig Lucas musical adaption of the 1962 film JP Miller adapted from his 1958 teleplay.
Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, disastrously imbibing in the movie, surpassed their previous screen work, and their performances foreshadowed what d’Arcy James and O’Hara are required to do, although in their case, eight times a week rather than hoping to get that camera take right once and then move on.
D’Arcy James, always able to seem either light-hearted and amiable on the one hand (he’s currently a Tony nominee for Into the Woods) and deeply intense on the other, digs into a man whose surname isn’t far from a description of his character. Like a spiritually dead salesman, Joe is forging ahead on a foxy smile and a reflecting shoeshine.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
A publicist quipster, this alkie is not only dependent on the bottle, but before reforming must hit a drinking bottom at least twice, once violently destroying an entire greenhouse. That precedes his joining Alcoholics Anonymous and eventually declaring, “Being sober is the most dangerous thing.” Portraying this gamut from A to Z and beyond, d’Arcy James tops his already wide-spectrum career.
Matching him with the performance of her career, O’Hara is no longer the graciously tolerant Anna Leonowens of The King and I but does draw on the naïve Nellie Forbush of South Pacific and the sexiness she flaunted as Babe Williams in The Pajama Game. She runs a parallel gamut from Kirsten’s initial disdain for drinking to believing she cannot imagine life without a drink.
Because degradation is one of Miller’s abiding themes, O’Hara as Kirsten has her chance to equal Joe’s mire-wallow. Long past falling prey to the Brandy Alexander Joe first foists on her, she’s now shacked up in a motel, guzzling gin, glass by quickly refilled glass. She hasn’t had the opportunity to emote this boundlessly before.
And the two are set loose singing, d’Arcy James unleashing his habitually grand baritone, O’Hara employing her classically trained soprano (she’s fresh from the Metropolitan Opera House and The Hours) as proficiently as ever, if not more so.
That’s right. This Days of Wine and Roses is a musical, though the term “musical” may be slightly misleading. It suggests the regular popping up of discrete songs, at least some of which are the sort ticket buyers can hum as they exit and perhaps hope to hear on Top 40 radio stations. OK, maybe not anymore.
This 100-minute, intermissionless piece — which clearly regards the traditional, 20th century, 32-bar song as a thing of the far distant past — is more of an opera and calls for putting aside any questions about its suitability for being musicalized, since it unflinchingly depicts dire situations. This regularly occurs in opera, no? Violetta and Alfredo do sing “Let’s drink,” don’t they?
Given its operatic leanings, the enhanced Days of Wine and Roses is, however, a much more contained project than Light in the Piazza, the last Guettel-Lucas outing and 2005’s Tony winner as best musical. And it makes sense that the earlier achievement leads to a reteaming.
Lucas having adapted Elizabeth Spencer’s novel, now taking on the Miller play and teleplay, wisely incorporates a large percentage of Miller’s dialogue. If he’s eliminated anything crucial, it’s Kirsten’s pathetic insistence when offered a happier ending that she simply cannot and won’t face life without a drink.
As for Guettel’s score, which he orchestrated with Jamie Lawrence’s assistance, and which is conducted with taste and tang by Kim Grigsby, heading a seven-person band: Although he may have not had this notion in mind, he gives the impression that he sees the songs in this score as the equivalent of alcoholic highs.
During Joe’s busy first scene, where he’s operating as a hyper-cordial promotion-party guide, only he sings. Another example has Joe and Kirsten chanting the dizzyingly syncopated “Evanesce” when, under alcoholic influence, they’re first falling in love. Calling a later number “Underdeath“ isn’t exactly masking the point. “As the Water Loves the Stone” is perhaps the most memorable of Guettel’s collection.
Songs as representing physical highs doesn’t pertain throughout. Joe and his and Kirsten’s smart, understanding daughter, Lila (the smart Ella Dane Morgan), sing when he’s sobered up. But in the 14-song (four reprises, emphasizing irony) score, only those three sing tunes in the somber mood piece that this Days of Wine and Roses ultimately is.
Often as the work unfolds, it seems as if director Michael Greif has his hands full sending out and removing the endless furniture that set designer Lizzie Clachan gathers to maintain a cinematic feel. All the same, he finds the time to push not only d’Arcy James and O’Hara past their limits but also keeps the other actors engagingly busy. Of those with anything resembling lengthy roles, Morgan as Lily, Byron Jennings as Kirsten’s father—and furious at what she becomes as Joe’s bride—and David Jennings as Joe’s patient AA sponsor, are entirely right.
Final confirmation: The Oscar-winning Days of Wine and Roses title tune by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer (they’d won the previous year for “Moon River”) is not included here. It would lavish a flowery gloss on the subject matter that Guettel’s music adamantly refuses to apply, and all to the good.
Days of Wine and Roses opened June 5, 2023 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through July 16. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org
