BETC’s production of Sean Daniels’ play is a darkly funny take on a familiar story.

The tale of a successful theatre artist who’s also a raging alcoholic highly skilled at sabotaging himself, The White Chip by Sean Daniels is an almost whimsical take on some pretty serious stuff. In a regional premiere from the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company now up at the Dairy Arts Center, Director Allison Watrous steps away from running the Denver Center’s Theatre for Young Audiences to tackle a decidedly adult story.

At the center of it all is Steven, a guy who’s managed to climb the ladder of regional theatre while also plunging the depths of alcoholism with benders that defy the imagination. But Daniels’ semi-autobiographical script rings true at every turn, and Drew Horwitz as Steven nails the character’s mix of charm and talent with his wildly destructive impulses and Trumpian skills at gaslighting everyone around him.

Along for the ride are a number of other characters, all played by Lindsey Pierce and Jihad Milhem. Pierce is Steven’s wife, mother, assistant and others while Milhem handles his father, boss, best friend and more. Steven’s narrative of the events is spoken directly to the audience, with a variety of mini scenes played out in between with the other characters. As such, the pacing of the show is quite fast, and Watrous does a nice job putting it all together with an efficient, realistic set by Tina Anderson and some excellent lighting work by Erin Thibodaux to establish the many playing areas.

Drew Horwitz as Steven. | Photo: Michael Ensminger Photography

A drunk’s tale

The White Chip refers to the item they give you at your first AA meeting just for being sober for a day (or even acknowledging you need to quit drinking). The running gag with Steven is the number of these he accumulates as he moves through repeated cycles of disaster, penitence, sobriety, relapse — and repeat.

One curious thing about the alcoholic’s tale is that we’re always supposed to be hugely sympathetic to people who’ve done terrible things because it’s a disease. We then are expected to offer them tremendous congratulations when they’re able to get to the steady state where most people exist praise-free.

From a plot perspective, this means your dipsomaniacal protagonist can emerge from each round as a renewed, purer and more sympathetic figure. Even so, each cycle diminishes trust by some percentage, so as the incidents pile up over the years, forgiveness gets harder to come by while the lies grow less effective.

All of that is played out at high speed in The White Chip, making a familiar storyline more interesting. Horwitz presents Steven as a character in his own life — a man intensely aware of the role he’s playing and the damage he’s causing yet reluctant to relinquish the part. With a twinkle in his eye and omnipresent bed-head, he delivers a winning performance that bring us along on Steven’s hellish roller-coaster ride while nonstop laugh lines make it all go down easy.

Pierce and Milhem provide the rolling layer of characters Steven stumbles through, successfully differentiating them and drawing out their own stories. Pierce is particularly effective as the mother who goes from antagonist to ally as well as his long-suffering assistant whose willingness to lie for him is tested at every step.

Milhem’s most defining role is as Steven’s dying father, nicely balancing the ongoing disappointment with his undying love for his son. As his boss at the theatre, he aptly portrays that alcoholic’s enabler willing to look the other way as long as he can because, hey, the guy’s filling seats.

There’s little doubt this will be an excellent play for the AA crowd to see, and family and friends of alcoholics may well get some pointed insight into the techniques drunks use to cover their tracks. One could call alcoholism a personality-defect accelerant, and The White Chip illustrates well why these stories resonate. Booze aside, we all recognize some of the worst aspects of human nature inherent in tales like Steven’s — and we can also feel some of the joy when they finally arrive in the still waters on the other side.

*Note: If you’d like to see this show but could use a little help, BETC has made available some complimentary tickets. Use the code GIFT in the ‘promotion code’ field before checkout. Limit 2.