The Last Five Years
The Last Five Years
By Jason Brown
Directed by Wade Hair
Musical Direction by Justin Scarlat
Starring Rob Guest Jr. and Erynn Hair
Breakthrough Theatre, Winter Park, FL</strong>
Sex – it always seems like a good idea at the time, but sometimes the novelty fades when you both grow up. Jamie (Guest) is an up and coming writer, Cathy (Hair) is an actress with summer stock potential. Their romance is told both forward and backward with Jamie’s thread progressing from infatuation into marriage to break up while Cathy begins at misery and backtracks to euphoria. Jamie is obsessed with getting a goyish girlfriend and Cathy wants out of small town Ohio and you sense they might have issues when you notice there’s only one song they really share. The issues are basic: Jamie is all about Jamie; Cathy is all about true love and martyring herself to an emotionally distant guy. I sympathize with the characters, but if they asked me out for drinks I’d fake a kidney stone.
Erynn Hair has all the good songs, and has the better voice to deliver them with. “A Summer in Ohio”, “Goodbye Until Tomorrow” and “Climbing Up Hill” all resonate well in Breakthrough’s intimate space, and Jamie’s big numbers “Shiksa Goddess” and “Nobody Needs to Know” are good but not as memorable. He projects well enough but his teeth are in some sort of grimace and he seems uncomfortable being such cad to his wife and girlfriend. I was unimpressed with the backing music; the six piece band called out in the script was replaced with a single prerecorded piano. It wasn’t so much the stripped down sound that bothered me, but there are long passages where a single plink plink plink keeps up the beat while the actors sing though to the bridge. If there’s an uncanny valley of musical arrangement, the folks at Musical Theatre International found it. While this show seems to get a production every other year it’s justifiably a perennial favorite and the gimmick for this run is a different cast each weekend. Future casts include Sarah Ross and Justin Nickerson, Krystal Gillette and Sage Starkey and Jolie Hart and Adam McCabe. Your mileage may vary.
For more information, please visit http://www.breakthroughtheatre.com</a</em>>
