Like the old Broadway musicals I Do! I Do! and They’re Playing Our Song, The Last 5 Years is a musical two-hander about a couple’s relationship which, unlike the I Do! I Do! couple’s marriage that lasted 50 years, lasts only five. But like They’re Playing Our Song it is about a troubled relationship. It is told in 14 sung-through scenes.
The show has a gimmick: Cathy’s story starts stage left at the end of the relationship and Jamie’s starts stage right on the day they first met. Song by song they move across the stage till they meet in the middle for the show’s only duet, Next 10 Minutes, in which he proposes to her on a boat on the lake in Central Park. They move on, she to stage right and the beginnings of the romance, he to stage left and a lifetime of regrets.
Jamie Wellerstein is a young writer, Cathy Hiatt is an actress. His career is on the up and up with his novel being reviewed in The New Yorker, her career is in trouble as she struggles with his success and her failure to find work.
The production at Bats is as simple as can be: only six small rostra or boxes, a sheet for a backdrop, no props, no lighting effects, and no sense of place. I had no idea they were meant to be on the Central Park lake till I read a plot summary in Wikipedia.
Nigel Edgecombe and Sarah Lineham, both fine singers and strong performers, were using radio microphones, the sort that make the singer look as if there is a boil on his or her chin.
Either one of them wasn’t working properly (the first song was unintelligible) or the six-piece band of experienced musicians under musical director Tom McLeod was too loud for such a small theatre. A bit of both, I expect.
Ironically, the one comic song, about Cathy’s audition for a musical in which she complains the rehearsal pianist is playing too loudly, was crystal clear. I can see the attraction of the show for a singer. The dynamic songs cover a wide variety of musical styles.
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