Review: The Last Five Years
On revisiting an old friend (And why we're still Team Cathy)
‘Jamie is over andJamie is gone…
’
Seven words that instantly take me back to 2002, and being that early 00’s musical theatre kid. It’s a show I could probably sing forwards and backwards (see what I did there). It’s a show that feels part of me.
For that reason, this review is split into two (again, see what I did there). In part review of (spoiler) Alice Ecklund’s brilliant reimagining at Porters Theatre. Part, Elder Millennial reflection on the musical theatre texts that raised us.
The theatre at Porters is transformed into the cosy living room of Cathy and Jamie’s apartment, bringing the intimacy of the piece to the fore and lifting the lid on a five-year relationship and marriage. It feels like, as an audience, we are peering behind the curtains, being let into the story as it unfolds, adding to the emotional intimacy of the piece.
The central concept of The Last Five Years is the story’s backwards-forwards structure. So Cathy’s story runs from the end back to the start, and Jamie’s starts to end with them meeting in the middle for one song (The Next Ten Minutes). There are multiple ways to stage this, and how much the actors interact, and Ecklund hits it perfectly. They inhabit the same space for many songs, one singing, the other lost in the moment of their story. Piece by piece, it builds up the missing fragments of the story- the parallels of what is happening in the other’s world at that moment work subtly into the narrative. This works most powerfully in The Next Ten Minutes, the only point at which they’re in the same moment. The moment that they finally look at each other- that’s a gut-punch moment of brilliance.
This show, like any two-hander, requires a lot from the actors, and Emma Wallace as Cathy and Elis Myers-Sleight as Jamie deliver on all fronts. They have incredible chemistry despite not actually interacting in a traditional way for 99% of the piece, which is impressive in itself. They of course, deliver on the emotional big notes, but an underrated element of this musical is the comedy and the need to deliver on that- and both do. Wallace delivering her lament to spending A Summer in Ohio is brilliantly broadly comedic- with a biting undertone that betrays the emotion behind Cathy’s exaggerated frustration. Wallace also delivers pitch-perfect ‘bad’ auditions in Climbing Uphill- helped too by David Haller’s impressive bad piano playing (harder than it seems). Her frustrations with the musical theatre industry, of course, hit home for all the performers in the room. Parallel to this, too, while in principle it’s hard to sympathise with a man lamenting not being able to sleep with other women because he’s married…Myers-Sleight manages it. In A Miracle Would Happen he manages to convince us that actually, he’s not a bad guy, he’s quite funny actually and it’s totally fine he wants to sleep with other women it’s quite charming and fun actually…all sarcasm about Jamie’s morality aside, the number is so energetically delivered, and full of fun and brings nuance to Jamie’s character through the humour- a real achievement.
The emotional weight of the show is tricky to balance; also, because it doesn’t follow a traditional ‘arc’, the emotional arc of each character could be tricky to pull off. Starting at the down note and building to the up while your only counterpart does the opposite (and vice versa) is tricky, but it’s pulled off elegantly. It’s a sign of how emotionally invested both actors make us when you can feel you’re soaring with Cathy’s excitement at the end, despite having just felt the gut punch of Jamie leaving moments earlier.
The heart of the piece is, of course, in the musical storytelling, and Ecklund’s direction, combined with Haller’s Musical direction, allows the score to soar. It’s a real privilege to hear it so intimately sung in the space at Porter’s, too. The music is elevated by Lara Lewis’s violin playing, which the refrains of haunt across the score under the actors’ performances.
This production also shows the potential of Porter’s theatre as a musical hub. We get great musicals in Cardiff, over at the big boy’s space mostly. But an indie space that works for all those small in size, but big in importance musicals? We don’t have enough of those. And it’s also a space- and a group of people who clearly get this kind of musical. The collaboration with Wojta Productions is hopefully too the start of many more to come. And for both companies, it’s clear that more importantly, they love it. So here’s to more musicals at Porter’s because spaces that get the small but mighty pieces of musical theatre are important- it’s where we get the Last Five Years of this world from. Here’s to saying in 20 years, ‘I saw that musical at Porter’s’ like the cool musical theatre kids love to do (cool musical theatre kids might be an oxymoron, I’m aware).
That leads me to the second part of this post…those musicals that occupy a particular place in a musical theatre nerd’s heart. The Last Five Years is one of them. There’s something about the musicals you find in your late teens and early 20s that cement themselves as part of your musical theatre identity- particularly if, like me you didn’t come to musicals until around then. So, Cathy and Jamie forever occupy a particular place in my heart. It’s the kind of musical that just sounds like a particular period in my life, and the nostalgia of being immersed back in it is strong.
But there’s something too about a musical you grow up with, and get to revisit. Like many theatre kids, I found a lot in Cathy’s story; the climbing uphill of it all, even if you’re not an actress, hits hard for anyone in this industry. And even some 20 years on, I still feel that. You want to tell her to hold on, girl, you can do it, but also tell her it doesn’t necessarily get better either.
I’m a romcom girlie, and even when the romcom doesn’t end well, it’s a genre I love. I love stories about love- good, bad and the…Jamie. Because the joy and pain of this score is how achingly beautifully it writes about love…and how masterfully it destroys it too. To go from ‘till there’s noone left who has ever known us apart’ to ‘conscious deliberate mistakes’. Heartbreaking, rage-inducing. Human.
Every time I revisit it too, there’s a moment- a fleeting moment- where I think, maybe Jamie has a point, maybe it’s not his fault, maybe he’s not so bad. It was bold (foolish, also given the legal trouble it gave him with his ex-wife) of Jason Robert Brown to write a musical in which he comes off that badly, but that makes me respect the elder JRB a little more. Momentarily, I think maybe Jamie and Cathy just fell apart…but then I remember how not sleeping with women was such a challenge. Maybe with time, it just depends on how many ‘Jamies ’ you’ve met in your life. Mostly, I remember that my friends and I did a musical theatre quiz with a ‘Name That Musical Theatre Prick’ round, in which Jamie featured prominently.
Jamie and Cathy have become like old friends. That story of a relationship you tell as part of your knowledge of love. They’re the Harry and Sally of my musical theatre life, and they’ll always occupy a particular place in my heart. Part nostalgia, but also incredibly current; the struggles to balance life, love and not fuck it up don’t go away after all, they just change. Both sides of the story feel true at different points in the show,but also in life.
Revisiting a show you love that much, that’s part of not just your musical theatre life, but also feels like it’s imprinted somewhere on you, can sometimes backfire. It can never capture the first time, the version that captured your heart. But it can feel like reconnecting with an old friend, or maybe an old lover. That’s what revisiting this show felt like, remembering the reasons you love someone.
Jamie was still a foolish, foolish boy, though.
The Last Five Years is almost sold out at Porter’s but tickets are available here there’s also a waitlist for sold out shows.
It’s produced by Wojta Productions who you can find here.