Days of Wine and Roses – Tron Theatre, Glasgow

Writer: Owen McCafferty

Director: Kenny Miller

Reviewer: Eve Nicol

The Public Reviews Rating:

Owen McCafferty’ new version of Days of Wine and Roses takes the relationship at the core of the original film and teleplay, placing it in bristling and unforgiving spotlight.

Both Mona and Donald are seeking new starts as they meet on a flight from Belfast to London in 1959. The couple’s expectations of life in the big city are met as they spend their days working and evenings drinking and socialising. Through marriage and the arrival of a son, ‘just the one drink’ turns into downing entire bottles at breakfast to hold off last night’s hangover. The couple argue and reconcile over endless sips and gulps as they attempt to tackle their mounting alcoholism.

The bright eyed Mona and Donald we meet in the play’s opening swiftly mutate into wine soaked, bitching and violent alcoholics. McCafferty’s writing does a splendid job of establishing the two characters from the off and it is easy to warm to this excitable, loving and funny couple. The transformation of Mona (Sally Reid), the little girl with big dreams and canny Donald (Keith Fleming), the man with a plan, is at points deeply frightening to watch. It has been dangerously easy for the couple to find themselves in a state of alcohol dependency as they blast through parties, hangovers and AA meetings. ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ will make you think twice about having that interval drink.

Kenny Miller’s design is reliably sleek; a polished surface which allows the splendid performances of the cast to shine out. Actors and imagery are beautifully offset. The reveal of Mona reclining as a alcohol stewed Venus is particularly striking.

Yet there are some puzzling elements to the staging. A pop art image of Jackie Kennedy smiles benignly from the brick walls of Mona and Donald’s London flat. The presence of this bold image on the wall feels incongruous in the otherwise stripped back set. The image is given an almost godly feel as the impressively imposing wall of improvised wine bottle candlesticks enshrines Kennedy yet her presence carries little influence over the action of the play.

Time serves as a measure of the distance the couple have travelled rather than setting the period. We visit the couple at yearly intervals across the 1960s. Apart from passing comments about the moon landings and violence in Northern Ireland, there is little to anchor the piece to its time setting. The dates, projected onto curtains, are drawn aside by two stoic young men whose striking similarity only becomes apparent come the curtain call. It is difficult to discern if there is anything intended to be read into the presence of these two intruders on the central relationship.

It is frustrating that there are pieces of incongruity in this simple and punchy play. It is a disappointing and odd mix of a lack of complexity and puzzling clues. Despite this, the great characters, excellent performances and striking imagery make ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ a truly scary and all too believable examination of our relationship with alcohol and those we love.