How ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ Became Their Passion Project

As origin stories go, the transformation of “Days of Wine and Roses” from a movie into a musical is a straight shot, with a twist. Kelli O’Hara and Adam Guettel had the inkling more than 20 years ago, when she was a Broadway ingénue, working on what became her breakthrough Tony-nominated role in “Light in the Piazza.” Guettel had written the music and lyrics for that musical, which went on to earn him a Tony Award for best score. They talked through their coordinating vision for evolving “Wine and Roses,” the midcentury classic of a romance ruined by addiction. “I think I used the words ‘a weird dark opera,’” O’Hara recalled.

She already had a co-star in mind: Brian d’Arcy James, debonair and wry, like Jack Lemmon was in the 1962 movie, opposite the O’Hara look-alike Lee Remick. The film memorably traced the stuttery arc of alcoholism and recovery, a trajectory now familiar — onscreen and off — but rarely put to song.

Guettel was not only game to try, he eventually brought in the playwright Craig Lucas, the Tony-nominated book writer for “Light in the Piazza.” Both had, separately, been facing their own addictions, in ways that informed, and sometimes overlapped with, the show’s development.

The twist, then, is that, two decades on, the musical about a whiskey-soaked couple has actually arrived on Broadway — it opens on Sunday — starring O’Hara and James, now in the prime of their careers, with gorgeously matched vocals. The production takes pains to show the love that propels their characters’ relationship — however misguided it turns out to be.