Adam Guettel: Last News

Days of Wine and Roses, the critically acclaimed musical adaptation of the 1962 film, will play its final Broadway performance on Sunday, March 31, just about two months after its January 28 opening night.

It’s easy to feel a bit smug early on in Days of Wine and Roses, as we know so much more – or at least have so much greater vocabularies – when it comes to things like toxic relationships and the role of abstinence in maintaining sobriety and all the other tenets of Bill W that have passed into common parlance and popular culture since Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick starred in the 1962 feature film version. Would the musical’s lovestruck alcoholics Kirstin Arnensen (Kelli O’Hara) and Joe Clay (Brian D’Arcy James) stood readier for battle if they’d seen so much as a single episode of Celebrity Rehab?

Gordon Cox Theater Editor Fresh off an early workshop of “The Light in the Piazza,” the actress Kelli O’Hara had a passing thought: What if there was an ambitious musical adaptation of “Days of Wine and Roses,” the 1962 addiction drama that starred Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick? It could give her a chance to reunite with “Piazza” composer Adam Guettel and with the actor Brian D’Arcy James, with whom she had starred in the short-lived Broadway musical “The Sweet Smell of Success.” Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below: “I just thought: What an awesome acting challenge and rich, artful experience [it could be],” O’Hara said in a conversation with James on Variety‘s theater podcast, “Stagecraft.” “Adam was intrigued by the idea and without me knowing, he went off and got the rights to it!” It took 21 years of on-and-off work, but “Days of Wine and Roses” finally had its world premiere at Off Broadway’s Atlantic Theater last year and has just begun performances on Broadway. Both performers said they relish the opportunity to return to songs that can be challenging both for singers and for audiences.

André Bishop will conclude his 33-year leadership tenure at Lincoln Center Theater in June 2025 at the conclusion of the non-profit theater company’s 40th anniversary 2024-25 season.

Days of Wine and Roses, a musical adaptation of the classic 1958 teleplay and 1962 feature film about a married couple struggling to come to grips with alcoholism, will open on Broadway in January starring Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James reprising their performances from an acclaimed Off Broadway production earlier this summer.

A new musical adaptation of the classic 1962 film Days of Wine and Roses will make its world premiere Off Broadway this May in an Atlantic Theater Company production starring Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James in the roles made famous by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.

New York City Center’s Encores!, which recently announced that its acclaimed production of Into The Woods is planning a Broadway transfer, has set revivals of The Light in the Piazza, Dear World and Oliver! for its 2023 season.

Floyd Collins — and seven years before The Light in the Piazza would light up Broadway and earn him two Tony Awards in the process — Adam Guettel took a break from musicals to pursue something a little different.Inspired by two very different sources — the Greek myths of Icarus, Pegasus, Hero, Leander, and Sisyphus and the lyrics he found in a 19th-Century Presbyterian hymnal — Saturn Returns, as it was originally called, was a theatrical song cycle exploring the nature of faith and longing in a secular world.Musically, the work features a diverse mix of 23 original songs, veering from electronic jazz to piano balladry, gospel to musical theater.