Days of Wine and Roses

About the show

The following is taken from the Days of Wine and Roses CD pamphlet Joe Clay, public relations man and Korean War Veteran, meets lovely secretary Kirsten Arnesen, daughter of Norwegian immigrant farmers, at an office party (“Magic Time”). He’s buzzed. She’s first bemused, then game. Part of what drives their click (“The Story of the Atlantic Cable”) is that Joe introduces Kirsten to alcohol. A farm girl from a chilly upbringing intrigued by her new life in the city, she takes to drink immediately (“There Go I”) and she and Joe connect exuberantly through it (“Evanesce”). They marry. And during her pregnancy and the early months with their daughter, Lila, Kirsten is happy and sober (“Sammen i Himmelin”). Kirsten only abstains briefly, though, before joining Joe in the bottle (“As the Water Loves the Stone”). Joe’s drinking gets him demoted to an account in Houston, away from his family. Both keep drinking alone, nevertheless (“Are You Blue?”), and one night Kirsten, taking care of Lila alone (“Underdeath”), passes out with a lit cigarette and nearly burns down their apartment building. Joe and Kirsten quit drinking and move in with Kirsten’s austere father on the farm where she had grown up, relieved to be healthy again (“First Breath”). But Joe has smuggled in alcohol, with a spare bottle hidden in Arneson’s greenhouse, ending up in a drunk ward (“435”). They now move back to the city, and Joe begins working with Jim Hungerford, his sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous (“Forgiveness”). But that night on her father’s farm, Kirsten had also begun to drink again, and her morning-after take on the matter is different from Joe’s. The only happiness she has known are the early years of their marriage, which included drinking. Joe’s association with A. A. feels like a shaming (“Morton Salt Girl”). She leaves on an open-ended bender, hoping but struggling to rejoin being a mother to Lila, as Lila hopes for her mother’s return (“The Letters”). Kirsten manages to put together five days without alcohol (“Forgiveness (Reprise)”). Joe and Lila nurse a wan hope that Kirsten will eventually rejoin them (“Lila Hangs the Moon”), but the best Kirsten can do is stop by briefly to leave Lila a present (“There Go I (Reprise)”). “The world looks so dirty to me when I’m not drinking,” she pleads – and with this ends the story of Kirsten and Joe.