Harry Teinowitz ended a 30-year drinking binge some years ago after spending eight weeks in rehabilitation and then continuing to attend weekly meetings. Thinking about the experience, he decided that rehab for him was decidedly theatrical—a conclusion perhaps common to many members of Alcoholics Anonymous as well as to members of other support groups. So much so that he decided to write Another Shot about his AA rehab past.
He’s done so with Spike Manton, a fellow stand-up comic. Saying in his program bio that he hopes to inspire others, it’s clear he has achieved the goal by putting himself on stage, as played by the highly effective Dan Butler. He’s Harry as narrator, reprising what must undoubtedly be close to exact memories of what Teinowitz said, saw, and incorporated in his recovery. (For those who don’t know, 12-steppers never consider themselves recovered but always recovering.)
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★☆☆ review here.]
This stage Harry recalls himself interacting with fellow rehabbers Vince (Chiké Johnson), Andrea (Samantha Mathis), Isaiah (Gregg Mozgala) and George (Quentin Nguyēn-Duy), all under unrelenting scrutiny by rehab coordinator Barb (Portia), herself a recovering alcoholic. It’s not indicated whether names have been changed, although, of course, members, advancing anonymity, never reveal last names during meetings.
Concentrating on his progress—initially marked by a (not uncommon) resistance to acknowledging he’s alcoholic—Harry also shows the halting progress of the other four as well as Barb’s successes and setbacks. The result, though from time to time impressing as a bit schematic, is what looks to be, as directed by Jackson Gay, a convincingly accurate representation of rehab’s own successes and setbacks.
That it doesn’t always work the first time is recognized in Andrea, who’s on her fourth or fifth shot—“shot” in the play’s title being a pun, of course, on an excessive drinking problem. Additionally acknowledged are potential rehab failures. George, the youngest and at one point obviously inebriated as well as later harboring a whiskey bottle, looks like a candidate for that doleful finish. But is he? Or does someone else succumb? No answer will be supplied here.
Crises abound and dealing with them by all five, who gradually bond but often strain their bonds, is at the Another Shot core. Whether Teinowitz demonstrates them exactly as they unfolded at the time, he alone knows (and possibly Manton), but little he includes impresses as unlikely. For any AA member or anyone in Alanon, what’s depicted is painfully and otherwise familiar.
Surely, one instance—presumably as close to the actual incident as it occurred—is Harry’s reading a letter he receives from his young daughter. In it she confides how much she misses him and worries what might happen to the family as an outcome of his absence.
Up to that moment Harry has always been ready with a joke, an instinct mentioned to him as his habitual response whenever he chooses not to be honest with the room or, more significantly, with himself. In what is the play’s most moving sequence, Butler, long missing from the New York City stage, shows Harry’s heart breaking just as he elicits the same effect from the audience.
As Another Shot tipples forward about the dangers and disasters of disproportionate tippling, many of its lines hang heavily in the air. There’s discussion about when and under what circumstances a first drink was taken. So much so that eventually Barb warns, “Forget the first drink, remember the last,” suggesting that a first drink may have been imbibed in pleasure, but a last drink was a bottoming episode. A wiser remark isn’t uttered during the 90 enlightening, threatening minutes.
As Harry Teinowitz’s (inspiring) recollections accumulate, they begin to impress not merely as a platform for non-drinkers to acquire an inside peek. Yes, they’re there for that purpose but the playwrights also surely have a more encompassing purpose: an invitation to any audience members wondering about their own situation.
Members of 12-Step groups know that meetings regularly feature one member talking for 20 minutes or so about his or her prerequisites for membership. That expression and expulsion of honesty is known as a qualification. From start to finish Harry, as he narrates, is giving an illustrated qualification example. (From time to time in Another Shot, Stefania Bulbarella’s projections on Beowulf Boritt’s comforting rehab set have unseen members briefly speaking about their joyful sobriety anniversaries.)
Furthermore, meetings get going with readings of the twelfth and last of AA’s organizing 12 steps: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
No question about it. With everything else Teinowitz and Manton intend Another Shot to accomplish, they’re using their best shot to reach out to other still practicing alcoholics. More sobriety power to them!
Another Shot opened October 29, 2024, at the Signature Theater and runs through January 4, 2025. Tickets and information: anothershotplay.com
