Days of Wine and Roses

Synopsis

A new version of JP Miller's play. Donal and Mona leave Belfast for a new start in 60s London. Strangers in an unfamiliar city, they fall in love with life, each other and the drink. An exciting whirlwind of discovery starts to spiral out of control as alcohol takes its grip.

Our Review:

23 February 2005

After playwright Owen McCafferty and director Peter Gill’s last award-winning collaboration on Scenes from the Big Picture - an epic new play, premiered at the National Theatre in 2003, in which 21 actors were propelled through a kaleidoscopic portrait of Belfast life and lives - both turn their attention now to something far more intimate with Days of Wine and Roses.

This stage re-working of JP Miller’s famous story, first written as a teleplay in 1958 and subsequently rewritten for a big screen version in 1962, could be subtitled Scenes from a Smaller Picture. In nine scenes – as opposed to the earlier play’s 40 – we follow just two characters over an eight-year period between 1962, when they meet at Belfast Airport as they’re both about to board a flight to take them to new lives in London, and 1970, when the man is packing to return home.

In the excoriating domestic drama that unfolds between those years, it re...

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Latest User Review

62.254.77.14) - 27 March 2005:

I found the whole play rather repetetive - one let's get drunk scene after another, each a bit more heavier than the last. The play had some good moments but overall lacked theatrical punch and didn't really go anywhere. This is probably a great play for actors to act in and let rip, which both actors did. I'm afraid that the actor playing Donal was incomprensible most of the time and his accent was far too strong to understand. At one hour 45 minutes with no interval it was heavy going and I nearly tunrned to drink myself by the end of it. At least I only paid £10.00 at TKTS so that was some compensation....

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