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I've been wanting to do a review of The Last 5 Years for a while now, but feel nothing I can say will do it justice.
The Last 5 Years was a one-act Off Broadway musical starring Norbert Leo Butz (Wicked, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and Sherie Rene Scott (Aida, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels)with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown (Songs for a New World, Parade).
It tells the story of a five-year marriage simultaneously from beginning to end (from the POV of the husband, Jamie) and from the end to the beginning (from the POV of Cathy, the wife). It's an interesting way to tell a story and allows Brown to write songs that are intimately connected to one another (both thematically and musically) but occur at opposite ends of the show. It's particularly interesting to hear the de-evolution of the opening song (Cathy's lament for her broken marriage "I'm Still Hurting"). If you were to listen to Cathy's songs chronologically, you would be intimately familiar with the melody of "I'm Still Hurting" by the time you got to it. In her second song "See I'm Smiling" she rebukes Jamie for his selfishness while in her second to last song "I Can Do Better Than That" she uses almost the exact same words (to the same music) to tell Jamie how much she wants him in her life. The non-linear structure forces the audience to pay close attention as Jamie begins referencing events that Cathy mentioned in the beginning of the show (and vice versa). Scott and Butz give some of the best performances of their respective careers in this show. Scott especially gives an astounding performance. My only regret is that the nature of the show has them telling their stories separately and they only get to sing together twice (in the middle of the show at their wedding, and in the finale, a bittersweet combination of Jamie looking back sadly at a love gone wrong and Cathy looking ahead to the endless possibilities of a new romance). The music itself is not incredibly complex, but it is catchy. The lyrics however are quite wonderful. The rhymes are clever, and the lyrics run the gamut from biting and funny to bitter and melancholy. There's a dichotomy that develops in the show, that I'm not sure would've been there if the story had been told chronologically. It's both joyful and sad, cynical and hopeful. The inevitability of the marriage's end does nothing to diminish the joy the characters feel at the beginning of the relationship.
As I feared, I don't think I've done the show justice with this review. But if this piqued your interest at all, go to Amazon and listen to the samples they have, and if you like it at all, buy the CD. You'll be glad you did. For more information about the show go to http://www.sh-k-boom.com/L5Y.html also to hear a song that was cut from the show (replaced by "Shiksa Goddess") go to http://www.sh-k-boom.com/JRB.html and listen to the sample from track 8 "I Could be in Love with Someone Like You".
The Last 5 Years was a one-act Off Broadway musical starring Norbert Leo Butz (Wicked, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and Sherie Rene Scott (Aida, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels)with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown (Songs for a New World, Parade).
It tells the story of a five-year marriage simultaneously from beginning to end (from the POV of the husband, Jamie) and from the end to the beginning (from the POV of Cathy, the wife). It's an interesting way to tell a story and allows Brown to write songs that are intimately connected to one another (both thematically and musically) but occur at opposite ends of the show. It's particularly interesting to hear the de-evolution of the opening song (Cathy's lament for her broken marriage "I'm Still Hurting"). If you were to listen to Cathy's songs chronologically, you would be intimately familiar with the melody of "I'm Still Hurting" by the time you got to it. In her second song "See I'm Smiling" she rebukes Jamie for his selfishness while in her second to last song "I Can Do Better Than That" she uses almost the exact same words (to the same music) to tell Jamie how much she wants him in her life. The non-linear structure forces the audience to pay close attention as Jamie begins referencing events that Cathy mentioned in the beginning of the show (and vice versa). Scott and Butz give some of the best performances of their respective careers in this show. Scott especially gives an astounding performance. My only regret is that the nature of the show has them telling their stories separately and they only get to sing together twice (in the middle of the show at their wedding, and in the finale, a bittersweet combination of Jamie looking back sadly at a love gone wrong and Cathy looking ahead to the endless possibilities of a new romance). The music itself is not incredibly complex, but it is catchy. The lyrics however are quite wonderful. The rhymes are clever, and the lyrics run the gamut from biting and funny to bitter and melancholy. There's a dichotomy that develops in the show, that I'm not sure would've been there if the story had been told chronologically. It's both joyful and sad, cynical and hopeful. The inevitability of the marriage's end does nothing to diminish the joy the characters feel at the beginning of the relationship.
As I feared, I don't think I've done the show justice with this review. But if this piqued your interest at all, go to Amazon and listen to the samples they have, and if you like it at all, buy the CD. You'll be glad you did. For more information about the show go to http://www.sh-k-boom.com/L5Y.html also to hear a song that was cut from the show (replaced by "Shiksa Goddess") go to http://www.sh-k-boom.com/JRB.html and listen to the sample from track 8 "I Could be in Love with Someone Like You".
