The Last Five Years at
the Tony Kiser Theater
Sweet, sad,
and beautiful, the Second Stage Theater production of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years (through May 18th
at the Tony Kiser Theater) is irresistible in every sense of the word. Mr. Brown’s inventive, gorgeous numbers carry
a weight unmatched by most love songs, and the performances of its two cast
members—Adam Kantor and Betsy Wolfe—are magnificent. Love is a gargantuan subject, but more than
adequately covered here in this quietly brilliant staging directed by the
show’s creator.
In the
show’s bitter opening sequence, the ill-fated marriage of Jamie (Kantor) to
Cathy (Wolfe) is coming to a close.
Jamie reveals his marital experience to the welcoming audience from
beginning to end; Cathy, in reverse.
They are only on stage together for one song: the great “The Next Ten
Minutes,” for their wedding. During the
rest of the show, they sing to their invisible spouses. (In a good bit of direction, Jamie almost
always sings facing stage right, and Cathy facing stage left.) Occasionally, we recognize scenes and
situations Jamie went through chronologically in Cathy’s backwards travel, and
vice versa. The innovative technique of
almost universally keeping one character on stage at a time, essentially
talking to their respective selves, highlights perhaps the greatest shared flaw
of the two characters—their fatal egotism.
Jamie’s intense focus on his career as a novelist overshadows his love
for his wife, and Cathy believes so fiercely that being married to Jamie will
perfect her life that when it doesn’t, she blames her husband.
There is,
naturally, a great deal of melodrama here, exquisitely played, but some humor
as well (in “A Miracle Would Happen” and the deliciously titled “Shiksa
Goddess”) and wistful allegory (in the gobsmackingly well-written “The Schmuel
Song”), all sung, not—I believe—accidentally, by Mr. Kantor. His character is far more interesting and
relatable than Ms. Wolfe’s, so much so that even when Jamie cheats on his wife
near the end of the show, the audience pities him and his (now) ex-wife
equally. (These character choices may
have something to do with the fact that Mr. Brown’s musical is
autobiographical, documenting his failed relationship with actress Theresa
O’Neill.) This, however, could be due to
the inimitable performances Ms. Wolfe and Mr. Kantor put forth in this
production, and the beauty and shrouded wonder Mr. Brown creates with his
tear-jerking finale, “Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You,” in
which Jamie has reached the emotional finale of the relationship, and Cathy her
wildly excited, smitten beginning. As
Jamie bids goodbye to the love of his life, her smile remains wide and
unchanging, blinded by the glory of an unsullied future relationship. It’s a blindness of which the audience is
painfully aware thanks to her powerful, angry performance in the first half of
the show, unable to control her husband’s slipping away.
The music
is radiant, which comes as something of a pleasant surprise to someone whose
only exposure to Mr. Brown’s work was 2008’s damningly awful 13.
The lyrics are clever but not unnecessarily so. Simplicity
and pure emotional expression are the themes explored in the intriguingly
mysterious score. It’s a journey anyone
would be lucky to go on. There’s a film
version (with Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan) on the way, but the chance to
experience the cyclical immersion of such beauty is one not worth losing. The
Last Five Years is, without doubt, the best offering currently on an
Off-Broadway stage. The show explores
themes of regret, anger, and betrayal, but the joy it inspires could not be purer.
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