Two men, one big idea

In the land of 10,000 treatment centers, the play "Bill W. and Dr. Bob" has a built-in constituency.

The drama, by the husband-and-wife team of Stephen Bergman and Janet Surrey, chronicles the unlikely friendship of two men who helped each other to stay sober and, through Alcoholics Anonymous, the organization that they founded, helped millions of others.

The play, opening today at the Illusion Theater, peels back the curtain on the men's lives, on their own ugly struggles and ultimate redemption.

"I think that it will resonate here," said director Michael Robins. "It's a story with a huge heart."

"Bill W. and Dr. Bob" is set against the backdrop of the Great Depression. After losing his shirt in the stock-market crash, stockbroker Bill Wilson descends into the punch-drunk depths. Bob Smith, a surgeon in Akron, Ohio, has been an alcoholic for 30 years, and has even operated on patients while he was hungover. The two men meet, and, by difficult and funny turns, forge a partnership.

"Their first meeting, which is at the end of Act One, was supposed to last 15 minutes," said Bergman, a psychiatrist in Massachusetts who has had a history of alcoholism in his family. "But they wind up talking for six hours. They were very different. Bill was grandiose and manic. Bob had a quieter personality that came alive when Bill engaged him. Turns out they had a lot in common."

In life and in the play, the two men arrive at a seemingly simple notion that changed the course of addiction treatment forever. "Bill comes to realize that the only thing that could keep a drunk sober was telling his story to another drunk," said Bergman. "He needed a community and in Bob, he found his drunk."

The group-talk movement the men founded runs counter to the go-it-alone ethos that is often celebrated in U.S. history, said director Robins. The men, who prized anonymity, would probably be embarrassed to be the subject of a play, he said. At the same time, Robins views theirs as "a great American success story" in which "two men of different backgrounds share an idea and make it work."

Behind the famous men

In the production, which is not associated with AA, Twin Cities journeyman actors Phil Callen and Terry Hempleman play the principals. Beth Gilleland and Carolyn Pool play their respective wives.

Robins said the fact that the wives were included in the play in a substantive way was attractive. It breaks away from the great-men formula of many biography-based works of art.

Over the years, the standard rituals of AA -- from the Big Book to the need to own up to hurtful behavior -- have drawn comparisons to religion. Many of the precepts of AA derived from the Oxford Group, a Christian movement to which both Wilson and Smith belonged. In fact, God is referenced in both the group's 12 traditions and 12 steps, a religious emphasis that has turned off some alcoholics.

"These guys rejected religion, but they are spiritual," said Bergman of AA's founders.

The play is getting its Minnesota premiere at long last. Bergman and Curry began working on it in 1986. False starts and bad luck, including the scuttling of a 1995 run that was scheduled in New York, dogged their early efforts.

("One of the money men had a relapse, and that was that," said Bergman.)

The death of an agent was followed by more setbacks. "Bill W. and Dr. Bob" was finally produced in New York several years ago.

All the hiccups turned out to be a good thing for the play. "I never lost faith in this story," Bergman said, adding that the time gave him an opportunity to get to know his characters better. "Understand that there has not been anything like this out there on these really important, interesting people. So, yes, after 23 years, they feel like part of the family, although I don't think I could live with them."

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390