No Edits, No Retakes: Witnessing the Spiral from the Stalls Theatre has always loved alcohol. Glasses clink, bottles appear and disappear, and characters loosen their tongues under the warm glow of stage lights. But while drinking has long been a convenient dramatic device, addiction itself has rarely been portrayed with the same honesty. Only in recent decades has theatre begun to move beyond caricature and cautionary tale, toward something far more uncomfortable — and far more truthful. What makes addiction so potent on stage is its immediacy. There is no cinematic buffer, no softening edit, no distance. When a character’s…
