The Last Five Years

This is a charmer of a production.

The Last Five Years is described as a musical but it’s really a song cycle for two. It is autobiographical; composer Jason Robert Brown basing it on his own marriage and break-up. One of the things that make it clever and engaging is the way it’s told. There are only two characters: Cathy and Jamie. Both 20-somethings. Each sings about their experiences of the relationship, from the meeting, to the courting, to the break up. However, we experience her version of the story backwards, from divorce to first date; while his version is interspersed running forwards. The halfway point of the show is the couple’s wedding.

This is a show amateurs could easily get wrong: The songs contain lots of vocal gymnastics, requiring experience and trained vocal technique. Even if an actor gets the songs right then there’s plenty of opportunity for them to drop character and wander into “Look folks! I can sing hard stuff!” territory. Overall, if not executed with the right tone the show becomes a hammy soap opera cabaret. There is also the problem that JRB has been turned into a sort of messiah by the younger theatre crowd, and disciples who sing his songs ruin them because they treat the songs as religious relics.

Fortunately this production is in safe hands. Under Sarah Prentice’s direction and Steven Kreamer’s musical direction this show becomes a touching and bittersweet tale of one couple’s courtship and decline. A simple set (well-placed risers) and tasteful use of video added to the effect.

Levi Burrows and Josephine Ison play the couple as real persons, making all the vocal tricks look natural and a genuine part of the emotion their characters are going through at the time. Not for one minute did they put their egos before the characters and the story, and I really felt for their plight. It helped that they each had a welcoming presence and beautiful voices.

A great example of how shows of this nature should be done.

Peter Novakovich