An Ambitious LAST FIVE YEARS On Broadway — Review

Kindly forgive the musical theater nerds in their chorus of gasps when, early in the new Broadway staging of Jason Robert Brown’s two-hander musical The Last Five Years, one character does the unthinkable simply by…well, by appearing on stage. 

It is not normally done this way. Brown’s unconventional musical, a 2002 flop Off-Broadway that quickly gained a huge following, typically keeps its central couple apart until the mid-way point of their doomed love story. 

That is because, in Brown’s narratively complex show, Cathy and Jamie are on very different journeys. Cathy’s tale begins at the end of the pair’s marriage, as she clutches a break-up note and mourns: “Jamie is over, and Jamie is gone.” But Jamie starts at the happy beginning, excitedly sharing the first glimpse of his “Shiksa Goddess.”

Customarily, Jamie would be singing that number to no-one. That is, no-one except the thousand-or-so audience members in Broadway’s Hudson Theatre, where The Last Five Years now makes its long-awaited Broadway debut. 

But in director Whitney White’s knotty, semi-successful rethinking of Brown’s unhappy tale, Cathy instead sidles onto stage mid-number, the object of Jamie’s questionable lust (“You are the story I should write” - hmm, red flag) before his and our very eyes. 

Far from betraying the material (itself semi-autobiographical, drawn from the composer’s first marriage and divorce), this shift draws out a surprising emotional potency in Brown’s story. The central couple never feel more distant than when they are side-by-side, one a silent participant in the other’s idealized imagining of what their love could be, maybe should be, but so evidently is not. 

White is also quietly pulling Brown’s into the present-day, a time when interconnectedness has only increased our distance from one another. The point is never underlined, but White lets the modern resonance live naturally within her loose, occasionally dreamlike staging. 

If a gulf between the two performers ultimately drags the production down, that same gulf also has surprising dramaturgical upsides. As Cathy, Adrienne Warren is beyond superb; red-hot and scorching. It’s a radiantly sexy performance, if also a tragic one. Warren finds no contradiction between Cathy’s incredible talent and her debilitating self-doubt. 

Put up against this kind of power, pop star Nick Jonas is almost comically outgunned. He can’t hope to hit the demanding high notes of Jamie’s strongest numbers, “Moving Too Fast” chief among them. And the less said about Jonas’ uncomfortable attempt at “The Schmuel Song,” the better. But Jonas does improve as the show goes on, dropping his pop-star mannerisms and finding quiet power in more somber numbers—particularly the cutting and cruel, “If I Didn’t Believe In You.” 

The upside of this disparity, intentional or not, is that Jamie has never felt more like a fraud. The character doesn’t have to play that way—his swift literary success, contrasted against Cathy’s struggles as an actress, can live in a more nuanced place. But the fraud angle certainly works, and here it proves potent. 

Not unrelatedly, White also plays smartly on race (again without ever underlining the point). While Cathy struggles for table scraps, Jamie rides an overnight wave of acclaim. Cast in the painful light of structural inequities, his cheerful encouragement of Cathy feels all the more unfeeling. That Warren’s casting alongside Jonas almost comments on a similar privilege is awkward, but not uninteresting 

David Zinn’s set is simple but striking, shifting between intimate spaces and New York majesty with ease. The new orchestrations, by Brown himself, are crisp and thrilling. Under Tom Murray’s music direction, this score has never sounded better, aided by clear and well-balanced sound work from Cody Spencer. 

The production saga in its final section, perhaps more a problem of material than staging—as Jamie and Cathy’s doomed love hurtles towards its last gasps,  Brown has made his point and runs out of things to say. White similarly runs out of ideas, and her sharp-edges give way to an unwelcome note of sentimentality. 

All the same, White has crafted an intriguing and intellectually ambitious revival, one that embraces the brutal emotional honesty of Brown’s source material.

The Live Five Years is now in performance at the Hudson Theatre on West 44th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.