by Philip Gooden
17 October – 15 November
It’s not exactly an original story. Boy meets girl, in New York. They’re both creative people, she an aspiring actor, he a wannabe writer. They fall in love and are soon committing to marriage and a lifetime together. But their careers are tugging against each other. As his takes off, hers seems stuck in the doldrums. He strays elsewhere, she senses things are falling apart. And so eventually, after five years together, they part.
This is the bare outline of The Last Five Years by the US composer and playwright, Jason Robert Brown. Two things make this piece different from a standard rom-com or drama. The unfolding events are told and shown almost entirely in song and, more daringly, the chronology of the play works in opposite directions for the two leads.
Cathy (Martha Kirby) begins at the end. She’s looking at a letter and removing her wedding ring while singing the plaintive ‘I’m still hurting’. But the next number comes from Jamie (Guy Woolf). He’s celebrating the fact that he, a young Jewish New Yorker, has finally found his ‘Shiksa Goddess’, as the song is titled. For him the affair is only beginning. For her the marriage is done. Throughout The Last Five Years, as hope and despair are jostled together, the audience enjoys a kind of double vision which is denied to Cathy and Jamie.
The two characters are often isolated by the staging and lighting as if to emphasise their personal, solitary perspective. They are united in only a handful of moments such as the Schmuel song, which recounts a charming Jewish folk tale, or for the wedding duet ‘The Next Ten Minutes’. But the Cirencester Barn stage is also filled by the quartet providing the music under the direction of pianist Ellie Verkerk-Hughes, and they too share in the action, echoing or engaging in what the principals are doing.
The music is properly varied from the funky sound of Jamie singing about temptation to the wistful ‘I’m a Part of That’ from Cathy as she struggles to adapt to his success. The detail of the lyrics may sometimes be lost in the louder stretches but the emotion always comes across.
The idea of manipulating chronology isn’t new to the theatre. In Betrayal Harold Pinter tells the story of an affair in reverse while J B Priestley’s Time and the Conways – due a revival? – has a second act which takes place chronologically after the third. But The Last Five Years is innovative in showing its protagonists at different times simultaneously, as it were. I thought this came across most poignantly at the end, when Martha sings a rapturous ‘Goodbye Until Tomorrow’ soon after her first encounter with Jamie even as he is walking out for the last time. Rarely can the opening and closing of a door have been invested with such weight.
Although the double-time perspective can occasionally be confusing, the energetic and whole-hearted performances from Martha Kirby and Guy Woolf, under the direction of Hal Chambers, give shape and feeling to this unusual musical. The intimate space of the Barn Theatre together with an uninterrupted run-time of 90 minutes make for an immersive experience.
With thanks to StageTalk magazine