The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: ATC’s Days of Wine and Roses – MCC’s Bees & Honey

By Ross

All on one day, a Saturday in June, I found myself feasting on Atlantic Theater Company‘s Days of Wine and Roses after a lunchtime visit with MCC‘s Bees & Honey. It was quite the meal, reeling and gulping down the complications of coupledom and attachment, played out in pairs in such different complicated ways. The shapes and forms of each unpacked the difficulty of engagement and love, but each spread was overflowing, sometimes with fine flavors and compelling narratives, but also with complexities that never found their footing, especially when they each found themselves wandering around in a haze of either alcoholism or swirling conflictual dynamics that even a mountain of books on the subject could not solve or make disappear.

With a book by Craig Lucas (I Was Most Alive with You) and music, lyrics, and orchestrations by the fascinatingly complex Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza), The Days of Wine and Roses delivers musical “magic time” in an abundance, making us drunk with its delicious chocolate flavors of a Brandy Alexander. “What’s your tragic story?” he asks, as the two soon-to-be lovers drift forward into a choppy suburban sea of isolation and alcohol, shaken and stirred with beautifully textured notes of sadness and need. The music soars, melodramatically, much like what lives at the core of the 1958 teleplay and 1963 movie “Days of Wine and Roses” on which this new musical is based. Although the film, starring the magnificent Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, never gives these two a moment to sing, even as the two fall madly in love. These are their days of wine and roses, we are told, but here, in this compelling musical, the songs fling themselves out like a distress call for help from an isolated island, heaving with the intense feelings of being stranded, desperate, and seemingly on their own.

The musical’s ideas have depth and courage, and are delivered pitch perfectly by the two magnificent leads who carry most of the vocal weight and baggage. Brian D’Arcy James (Broadway’s Shrek; Into the Woods) fascinatingly ushers forth a Joe Clay that swings wide and true, vocally sounding maybe, quite possibly as brilliant as Kelli O’Hara (Broadway’s Kiss Me, Kate) in her role as the beautifully kind Kirsten Arnesen, the young secretary (that’s what they called them back then) who had not found the flavor of alcohol appealing until that fateful night. We watch with nervous anticipation as the drink is lifted to her lips, knowing what is in store, but hoping she doesn’t drink the Kool-aid that Joe keeps pushing. And then they are off to the races, finding melancholy melodies in both the drunken pleasures and pain of addiction.

The music effortlessly hangs between them, enlightening the depth of their destructive ways, while keeping them isolated from the outside world that keeps shining a light on the problems that are approaching. The other characters, under the direction of Michael Greif (2ST’s A Parallelogram), do their best to step into the light, especially David Jennings (Broadway’s Tina) as Joe’s AA sponsor, Jim Hungerford, who wisely underplays this pivotal role rather than presenting a sermon. There is also the troubled father of Kirsten, played intently by Byron Jennings (Broadway’s Harry Potter…), who flounders a bit in the foreground, worried and angry about the road his daughter is taking, yet seeing clear that he has little power to challenge her path.

Guettel pours out song after jagged song, exposing the twisted engagements that are taking over their lives. It’s troubling and upsetting to watch, even when teetering on melodrama and mayhem, and the two leads expertly lead us through the tangled path they are taking. The ideas and formulations mesh and blend in with each other, separating songs from the action, and the heart from the formula, all on an awkwardly complicated set designed by Lizzie Clachan (Bridge Theatre’s White Noise) as the piece somewhat stays far too close to the expanse of the film version. A sharpening of its visual would have suited the piece, simplifying the locations and finding other ways to tell this tale without bringing a room full of plants into the already crowded picture.

With determined costumes by Dede Ayite (Broadway’s Topdog/Underdog), simple lighting by Ben Stanton (Broadway’s Good Night, Oscar), and a solid sound design by Kai Harada (Broadway’s Kimberly Akimbo), the piece never shuffles with ease, and that is one of its clever constructions, I’m thinking. This isn’t a hummable show, but one that sucks you in like an opera led by two, at least in the beginning before their daughter, Lila, dutifully portrayed by Ella Dane Morgan (Broadway’s Waitress), begins to join them in their vocal union, expanding what is at stake, from a pair to something more.

Under the watchful eye of choreographers Sergio Trujillo (Broadway’s Next to Normal) and Karla Puno Garcia (Netflix’s tick, tick…BOOM!), and backed most gorgeously by the score courtesy of music director Kimberly Grigsby (Broadway’s Camelot), The Days of Wine and Roses drunkenly plays a tender game of hide and seek, teasing us with glorious music and magnificent performances by all, but leaving us, somewhat unsettled and distant from this fragmented and choppy musical melodrama.

Ignited by Juan Luis Guerra’s classic love-making Bachata Rosa hit “Como Abeja al Panal“, MCC’s Bees & Honey discovers its emotional beat and rhythm within, and much like …Wine and Roses, it finds its impactful soul in its two leads, who expertly deliver tender honest performances that register. Written with an authentic air by Guadalís Del Carmen (My Father’s Keeper), the play, presented in partnership with The Sol Project, delivers an unpacking, beginning tenderly, although a tad clumsily, with the play’s two lead souls talking out into space explaining the night they met. And how they knew they had found their match.

It’s maybe not the most clever of ways to explain how two different worlds collide at a Dyckman Street club where one goes to find “fly mamis” and the other sees it as “sketchy“, but the tale that follows feels honest and caring. They are the steps you can feel, and in the hands of these two actors, we are drawn and delivered to this apartment in “the Heights till I die.” A telling statement, one he says with all the honesty of the world, and it sits firm.

As directed with confidence by Melissa Crespo (Syracuse Stage’s Native Gardens), the two lovers stand strong in their truth. The well-educated lawyer, Johaira, played knowingly by Maribel Martinez (NY Shakespeare in the Park’s Julius Caesar), and the ambitious mechanic, Manuel, strongly portrayed by Xavier Pacheco (Public’s Richard III), dive in as if the stars were aligned in the making of their love, even with the all those differences so obviously placed before them and us. Books are asked to be read, and when Manuel’s difficult, but ailing mother needs to move in, the judgment felt in the room around ideals becomes more pronounced and hard to ignore. Clashes around such frameworks, such as work, class, marriage, morals, gender roles, pregnancy, education, and ambition, start to show the strain. Especially when the bedroom in the back, which used to be the place for their love-making, bell-rings loud with Spanish television shows, watched by the mother as the living room starts to spin in accusations and resentment.

It feels obvious and standard, even in its honest unraveling, where two worlds overlap and try to live as one. The set, designed with a somewhat blunt unused mural-painting hand by Shoko Kambara (Syracuse Stage’s Next to Normal), hangs nicely in the real world, but the abstracts never present themselves as useful, other than the blatant revealing of something we already were feeling and knowing. The costumes by Devario D. Simmons (Broadway’s Thoughts of a Colored Man), the lighting design by Reza Behjat (ATC’s English), and the solid sound design by Germán Martínez (Broadway’s The Piano Lesson) do a better, more subtle job delivering this drama forward in ways that we can relate to.

The themes of gender and power dynamics sometimes feel heavy-handed, triggered by the alliance of corrupt fraternity brothers within a sexual assault trial that hangs over Johaira’s head, tugging at her ambition, but more importantly, at her ideals of what is right and what is wrong. And we can’t help but anticipate the collision as a necessary conflict for these two to master. MCC‘s Bees & Honey ultimately finds an opaque resolution that is far more hopeful than ATC‘s fretful The Days of Wine and Roses, but both unpack an emotional reality that registers, and feels utterly personal.