CRITIC’S PICK: "If not for the unbridled drinking, it might easily have been a screwball comedy...Directed in its world premiere by Michael Greif for Atlantic Theater Company, this 'Days of Wine and Roses' fills the old Gothic Revival parish house that is the Linda Gross Theater with glorious sound."
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"Despite some moving moments, 'Days of Wine and Roses' is a downbeat musical cocktail that doesn’t expand or enhance the source material."
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"Kirsten and Joe’s dissolution, though telegraphed and executed with precision, is more abstract than gutting. You can see the rails of the plot too clearly, one character trading positions with another, and that distracts from seeing them fully as a people and from a more complex understanding of the disease. The approach is decorous."
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“The thorns pierce deeply in the new musical ‘Days of Wine and Roses.’ And not just for the main characters, a loving couple who see their marriage, and their lives, spiraling out of control in the throttling grip of alcoholism.”
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"As a ruthless account of the fate that wrecks the lives of decent people, this is a grim, graphic, and demanding play, but as a musical, I watched them suffer but just wasn’t able to suffer with them the same way. In 'The Days of Wine and Roses,' there’s plenty of wine, but you won’t go away humming any roses."
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" 'Days of Wine and Roses' returns us to the middle of the last century, when alcoholism was perhaps more of a hot-button social issue. But its catalyzing role in a co-dependent relationship remains dramatically interesting"
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"If you’re looking for the feel-bad hit of the summer, the Atlantic has you covered...'Days of Wine and Roses' might be a harrowing watch, but you’ll never see anything like it again."
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“They've watered down the wine in this well-intentioned but strangely stilted musical about the ravages of boozing. Blake Edwards' 1962 film, written by JP Miller…remains an astonishingly frank and ugly account of a marriage destroyed by alcoholism, not least for the unsparing performances of Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. As sometimes happens, however, the process of transforming such sharp-edged material into musical theatre hasn't added anything new or essential. Seeing it the other day at the Atlantic, I kept wondering why anyone thought Days of Wine and Roses needed to be a musical at all.”
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