Message in a bottle

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, Draíocht, Blanchardstown, Dublin Ends Sep 12 8pm 20/16 01-8852622; Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Dublin Sep 15-19 8pm 20/16 01-4627477

According to legend, when the producer of JP Miller’s 1958 teleplay visited rehearsals (these were still the days of live broadcasts), he was both deeply approving and slightly worried: “You’ve got the wine,” he told the director. “Now let’s see if you can get the roses.” It’s easy to lose sight of a flowering love within an unflinchingly real study of alcoholism, one that features a couple whose relationship is based more on their mutual dependence on the bottle than each other. The title actually carries a rather sombre meditation on mortality, from an Ernest Dowson poem: “They are not long, the days of wine and roses.”

Although the celebrated Northern Irish playwright Owen McCafferty is no stranger to depicting boozers on the stage, it is the fraught love story that holds his focus in his 2005 theatre adaptation, first staged by the Donmar Warehouse and now produced by the unlikely troika of Cork’s Everyman Palace, Tipperary’s Galloglass Theatre and Dublin’s Civic Theatre.

McCafferty’s version begins in Belfast Airport, before relocating the story to swinging and swigging 1960s London, but director Conall Morrison and his performers, Martin Brody and Judith Roddy (above), have a greater journey planned, taking in 22 venues over 11 weeks. That itinerary alone is worthy of a toast, but after a glimpse of these lives, you may shudder to raise a glass.

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