Theatre in Review: Days of Wine and Roses (Studio 54) Having opened at Atlantic Theater Company last summer, Days of Wine and Roses transfers to Broadway with two major problems intact. The first is the challenge of dramatizing its subject. The musical, you will remember, is based on the teleplay and screenplay by JP Miller, detailing the descent into alcoholism of a young couple, Joe Clay and Kirsten Arnesen. Both work in the same faintly seedy PR firm, he as an account executive, she as the boss' secretary. When they meet, she is a teetotaler; on the make, he slips her a Brandy Alexander and soon she is imbibing anything a bartender will serve up. After their wedding, she pulls back while nursing their baby. But, one night, following a furious argument with her well-oiled spouse, she gives in, becoming a full-fledged slattern who, half in the bag before dark, passes out with a lit cigarette in her hand, nearly burning down the apartment building. Joe isn't much better, having lost his job after too many nights carousing with his clients. Of course, American drama is loaded to the gills with alcoholics; where would Eugene O'Neill be without his sozzled dreamers? But becoming addicted is a process, often a gradual one, that is difficult to depict in a dramatic context. The film does a solid job of showing Joe and Kirsten hitting bottom by degrees; onstage, it's not so easy. Composer-lyricist Adam Guettel provides a montage sequence in which, across several evenings, Joe and Kristen work their way through whiskey, champagne, and a few too many margaritas, but, in Michael Greif's confusing staging, it's not immediately clear what is happening. (For one horrible second, I wondered if they were downing all that booze in a single evening. As Honey says in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, "Never mix, never worry.") And even if several years pass between Kirsten taking that first fatal sip and the fire that should be a wake-up call, the transition feels strangely abrupt. It's a thorny problem: We already know where the characters are headed, and Guettel and book writer Craig Lucas are correct in not wasting time about it but Joe and Kirsten are drowning in booze before we have a chance to know them. The show only glancingly establishes the fact that Joe is, basically, a pimp for his clients, a point made extensively in the film; one song alludes, in vague terms, to his traumatic experiences in the Korean War. Also, missing are the two stays in mental institutions and the pivotal acknowledgment to a roomful of AA drunks that undergird the change in his character. Similarly, Kirsten loses some of the details that define her in Miller's versions, like the handsy boss she must put up with and the sordid, cockroach-filled apartment that is all she can afford. When the show really starts to plumb the depths of the characters' gut-level sorrows, which it does in the show's final third, it's because of Lucas' trenchant book scenes. (Joe is starting to recover, with the help of AA; Kristen continues to slide, winding up in a sleazy motel littered with empty bottles.) This is the point where one begins to wonder why Days of Wine and Roses needs to be a musical at all. The authors often seem to be searching for places to put songs, many of which are tentative, glancing off the characters without fully engaging with them. "Story of the Atlantic Cable" is designed to highlight Kirsten's dedication to self-improvement -- she is educating herself by going through an encyclopedia, volume by volume -- but it feels more like a songwriter's clever conceit than a revelation of her character. "Underdeath," a cri de coeur from the drunken, depressed Kirsten, suffers from a repetitive lyric; similarly, the boozy duet "Evanesce" overworks its slightly strained metaphors ("Two dolphins breakin' a wave/Two dolphins right to the grave"). It's telling that the number that gets the biggest hand is the lovely "Forgiveness," which, sung twice, signals false dawns for both Joe and Kristen. Overall, the score seems to exist on an emotional plane far removed from hangovers and bitter morning-after recriminations. Greif, of course, gets impeccable work from his stars. Brian d'Arcy James' Joe is a needy operator, hoping to find a little decency and seething from a rage he can't quite explain. He is responsible for the most wrenching sequence, in the number "Four Three Five," laying waste to the greenhouse owned by his father-in-law while searching for a stash of hooch. The actor also makes wholly credible his turn, at long last, toward sobriety, especially in the final tableau with his long-neglected little girl (Tabitha Lawing as an alarmingly wised-up eight-year-old). Kelli O'Hara finds real anguish in Kirsten, who doesn't want to start drinking, and then can't stop; her stupors are alarmingly convincing as is her heartbreakingly hopeful attempt at making things up to her husband and child. Both stars are in fine voice, even if the score requires a daunting number of shrill high notes from O'Hara. Byron Jennings provides stellar support as Kirsten's withholding father, hobbled by a lifetime of stoicism. Also fine is David Jennings as the AA sponsor who teaches Joe to get real. Lizzie Clachan's set, with its illuminated panels and modest furniture arrangements, is an oddly bland concept, but Ben Stanton's lighting adds considerable heft and theatricality to each stage picture and Dede Ayite's costumes are solid period creations; the clothing also accurately tracks Joe and Kirstein's falling fortunes. Kai Harada's sound design is admirably clear and crisp; he also provides a variety of effects, including sirens, gunfire, and announcements on an airport PA system. Some very gifted people have applied themselves to the task of making a musical out of Days and Wine and Roses but somehow the material proves resistant. It's a downbeat evening, arriving at a conclusion the audience will see coming well in advance, and the songs add little coloration to an extremely bleak picture. It's a brave, honest effort, but, if anything, it is too sober for its own good. --David Barbour 
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