DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
The Musical
Book by Craig Lucas
Music and Lyrics by Adam Guettel
Based on the teleplay and screenplay by JP Miller
Directed by Michael Grief
Starring Brian D’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara
Studio 54
Reviewed by David Spencer
Days of Wine and Roses falls into an interesting category: It’s the archetypal Case History drama, very much a product of the 1950s through the mid-70s, born of the then relatively-young medium of television, which was often used as a platform to dramatize social issues that had never before been examined through the lens of popular culture and performance. And especially the first time any subject was given exposure, the characters were archetypal as well. Which is to say that only rarely were they larger than life or starkly memorable as characters.
Not where social issues were concerned.
Different in what I think of as “the gathering play,” which was/is meant to introduce the cross-section of a subculture to mainstream society for the first time—to give an intimate look inside—such as Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (the black experience in America) and Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (the homosexual community), because in those cases, the extremes of character contrast, the unknown world trying to survive within the world that would seek to hide or marginalize it—are the point: there we’re dealing with extremes of archetypal contrast and the underlying drives and desires that make those personalities identifiably sympathetic; like us, despite being exotic to us. That’s why simple first names in the right context—Emory, Walter Lee, Harold, Lena—instantly conjure iconic images, voices, behaviors, the multi-dimensional-persona works.
But issues…
The characters in dramas about topic sentence/passive noun issues…abuse, addiction, workplace victimization, death penalty, systemic breakdown…
They are us. When those issues are being explored for the first time—an important distinction—in a manner meant to shed light and educate, they have to be us. Why is first time dramatization so crucial a distinction here? Because the first time presents the basics; the ground rules; the universal realities we all might face or witness. In subsequent stories, once we’re hip to paradigm and terminology, characters can be VERY extreme and individualistic, because then the issue is a vehicle for character study. But not when you’re breaking it down for the uninitiated. In Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men, about the jury system and justice, it’s not a random choice that none of the jurors in the script are given names; we know them only by numbers. Otherwise they’re the quiet one, the blue collar one, the white collar one, the fair-minded foreman, the bigoted holdout and etc.
Which brings us to Joe Clay and Kirsten Arnesen.
The advertising salesman and the sassy executive assistant. He drinks, she doesn’t. They fall for each other. He gets her into alcohol by appealing to her sweet tooth. They marry. They have a daughter—concurrent with a decline over the course of a few years, as alcoholism claims their lives. Via AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) one of them will climb out of the hole and forge a path back to a functional life. One—at least by the drama’s end—won’t.
If Joe’s not everyman and Kirsten’s not everywoman, the story loses its ability to be an object lesson, because the thesis is, alcoholism can potentially happen to anyone, without regard for intelligence, character, social standing, career, anything. The roles can be performed memorably, but the roles themselves cannot be memorable, not in the sense of being iconic. You can’t have Tevye, Mama Rose, Sweeney Todd. At best you can have Bobby.
This makes musicalization a real challenge. Because your main characters can’t really sing the passions that motor their existence and the target goals that define their trajectory. They can only sing about the condition in which they find themselves at any given moment. And there’s not a lot of room for subtext. You can argue that their refusal to face their alcoholism, or call it by its name, is the subtext…but it’s not a song-specific subtext. It’s an undercurrent of the alcoholic condition. Until, upon the cry for help, it isn’t, and then even that dimension can no longer inform the score, especially for the character in recovery.
(Now before I continue, let me add: I kind of like the musical of Days of Wine and Roses, at least to the degree that seeing in anew upon its Broadway transfer was a welcome revisit. There’s much to admire. It’s a brave piece. But I want to get at something deeper and beyond that. To continue:)
So: What have librettist Craig Lucas and composer-lyricist Adam Guettel done to offset this a bit? To give the musical version of the drama more individualistic juice by way of making it musical?
Mr. Lucas: Some streamlining; some hipper dialogue; woodshedding scenes that would be implicit via later scenes; a move of the story’s locale from San Francisco to Manhattan. Most consequential change, arguably: how he leaves the relationship between Joe and his always-wary father-in-law (the as-always impeccable Byron Jennings); the last scene between them takes a less by-the-rules turn. Otherwise: no updating to anything but brushstrokes of psychological sensibility, though carefully avoiding anachronism; still set in the late ‘50s, like the original teleplay.
Mr. Guettel: Somewhat circumvents the pitfalls of singing about in-the-moment condition without subtext by creating a vocal score whose approach is much more that of contemporary opera than musical theatre; traditional song-forms are rare, leitmotifs are the glue holding it together, and much of it (most of it?) is through-composed. It doesn’t promise traditional structures and thus avoids the obligation of honoring them.
And together Lucas and Guettel have made this decision:
That only Joe and Kirsten will sing. Until their young daughter is introduced; then she can sing as well. (In the musical, the daughter is a few years older than the very young girl in the original, which is wise: the actress can be more vocally and technically accomplished and capable of more nuanced interaction.) And why? To establish the conceit that the family are in their own world, that alcoholism has placed them in a bubble. And of course, even in recovery, it’s not a bubble you can ever leave—you never stop being an alcoholic. Or the child of one.
Under the direction of Michael Grief, all this holds stage reasonably well. And like their spiritual forebears, Cliff Robertson & Piper Laurie in the teleplay, Jack Lemmon & Lee Remick in the film, Brian D’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara, while not able to make the characters transcend their Case History function, make their mark, acting and singing the hell out of them.
And we can leave it at that.
Except for one thing.
I think the creative team missed a big opportunity.
The hype for Days of Wine and Roses, immortalized on the cover of the novelization (by David Westheimer, best known for Von Ryan’s Express) has always said that it’s the story of a love triangle…between a man, a woman and alcohol.
Actually that’s not true.
And here come spoilers, for those who don’t know the famous story.
Alcohol is only the McGuffin. A bottle can’t sing. Alcohol addiction is merely—funny word in this context, but merely—what makes the story possible.
But the third member of the triangle is Jim Hungerford.
Jim’s the guy from AA who becomes Joe’s coach and sponsor.
And lifeline.
He’s the guy with crucial lines of dialogue. Lines that seem glossed over on stage.
To be fair, these are gems hiding in plain sight. It may be the way they’re written, in that if you don’t recognize what they give you to work with, they don’t leap off the page. Even director John Frankenheimer missed giving them their weight in the original Playhouse 90 broadcast: Malcolm Atterbury was a decent character actor, but his Jim Hungerford comes off as “just” the AA guy who speaks the boilerplate truth. (Which is kind of what happens with David Jennings in the musical too, though his natural persona has a little more juice. The production choices may be what limit him from going further.)
But the lines land like crazy in the film, directed by Blake Edwards. Generally regarded as a lesser rendition than the teleplay, in this it has an element that’s key. For Edwards cast Jack Klugman. Who was incapable of being just the AA guy.
And Edwards, understanding this (one assumes), gave Klugman the time and space to make the boilerplate personal. And in Klugman’s hands, the boilerplate becomes lifeblood.
Lines like:
“You’re sober [now], Joe. It wouldn’t be any fun [for Kirsten] to drink around you…She’s lost her playmate. Don’t be surprised if she finds another one.”
And:
“Joe, that night you tore up your father-in-law’s greenhouse looking for the bottle…when you found it…You didn’t go back and drink it with Kirsten. Why not?”
And, when a distraught Joe asks, “Isn’t love…love?” this reply:
“I don’t know. I was drunk for twelve years. I’ve been sober for the past fourteen. And I know the drunk world is one world and the sober world is another.”
Of course, that last line may well contain the seed of the musical team’s choice, but I also think it contains the seed of the miscalculation—because Jim, as he says right there, has been in that drunk bubble too. He’s still an alcoholic.
If he doesn’t sing, he’s just the good guy who shows up when Joe needs a good guy to show up.
If he gets to sing, he’s fighting Kirsten for Joe’s salvation. As an initiated member of the tribe.
And if he’s a prosaic character in one sense, he’s a larger-than-life character in another…because he made it out of the hole.
He wants Joe, in that sense, to be larger-than-life too. But Joe wants both sobriety and Kirsten; he can’t have both.
Sobriety, to bring this full circle, is but a condition.
But if Jim gets to sing—he’s what sobriety looks like. What sobriety IS.
And that’s your triangle. Your human triangle.
Would that transform this new Days of Wine and Roses from a semi-operatic issue drama to the roaringly passionate musical it so wants to be? To break the source material free of its innate constraints?
I’m not sure. I’m not sure.
But I know it would lift the piece higher.
And I hope one day the team might give it a try.