‘Days of Wine and Roses’ Musical to Open on Broadway Next Spring

“Days of Wine and Roses,” a musical adaptation of a midcentury story a few loving marriage destroyed by alcoholism, will come to Broadway early subsequent 12 months starring the acclaimed stage performers Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James.

The manufacturing had a 10-week run earlier this 12 months on the Atlantic Theater Company, an Off Broadway nonprofit. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Laura Collins-Hughes referred to as it a “jazzy, aching musical,” and praised its “glorious sound.”

O’Hara is a seven-time Tony Award nominee who received the award in 2015 for her efficiency in a revival of “The King and I.” James is a four-time nominee, most not too long ago for final season’s revival of “Into the Woods.”

The Broadway manufacturing, directed by Michael Greif (“Dear Evan Hansen”), is scheduled to start previews Jan. 6 and to open Jan. 28 at Studio 54 for a 16-week run. The lead producers are Kevin McCollum, Mark Cortale, Lorenzo Thione and Joey Monda.

“Days of Wine and Roses” started its life as a teleplay in 1958; it was then tailored into a movie in 1962. The musical contains a rating by Adam Guettel and a e-book by Craig Lucas; they beforehand collaborated on the 2005 musical “The Light in the Piazza,” and each of them have spoken about their very own struggles with substance abuse.

Guettel mentioned he’s unsure when he first encountered the movie, however that it instantly resonated. “I was really streaming tears at that point,” he mentioned. “I had a sense of how alcohol and drugs had affected my life, and even though I had escaped the clutches of all that, the vivid recognition of it really spurred me on, not to create some sort of cautionary tale, but to depict how being addicted affects your life and the people around you.”

The musical, like many, has had a protracted and bumpy street to Broadway. Guettel mentioned he first mentioned the concept with O’Hara twenty years in the past, when the 2 have been engaged on “The Light in the Piazza,” and that he had developed the rating for her.

“It seemed like the right role for her, even then, in terms of the tenderness and the strength,” he mentioned.

James joined the challenge within the earliest days as effectively; he and O’Hara are mates who carried out collectively in “Sweet Smell of Success.”

There have been others who’ve come and gone — at one level, John Logan was the author; at one level, Scott Rudin was the producer; at one level, Lincoln Center Theater was going to stage the present.

“The fact that it is coming through the steeplechase intact is incredible,” Guettel mentioned.