The year was 2001. Jason Robert Brown had recently won the 1999 Tony Award Best Score for his work on Parade, cementing him as an impressive rising talent of musical theatre. At the same time, he had just gotten divorced. What was he going to write next? He didn't want to write a musical that was as big and epic as the politically charged Parade. So for his much anticipated follow-up to Parade, Brown decided to go smaller and more intimate: The Last Five Years, a musical with just two people. And it was partially inspired by his own failed marriage.
The show opened May 23, 2001, in a small theatre in Skokie, Illinois, called Northlight Theatre. It then hopped Off-Broadway in 2002, where it ran for only two months. Talks of Broadway were in the air, but never materialized. It seemed like The Last Five Years would become a chamber piece that would quickly be forgotten.
Then something wonderful, and rare, happened. The show, and its gorgeous music, remained. A cast album, featuring a young Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott, introduced a wider audience to the score and kept the show alive. A legion of theatre devotees learned about the music before they had even seen the show. In the two decades since, this small, romantic musical inspired numerous productions in America and worldwide, including in London, Japan, Korea, Iceland, Germany, Brazil, and Italy. A film adaptation was released in 2014. And now, The Last Five Years is making its much belated Broadway debut, at the Hudson Theatre March 18. And you've probably already heard the show's songs, such as "Still Hurting," "The Next Time Minutes," or "Shiksa Goddess."
What is it about this small show, with only two characters who don't interact at all until the halfway point of the musical, that has kept it in the musical theatre zeitgeist?
Well, first, it could be the dramatic real-life story that inspired The Last Five Years.
The Last Five Years follows a relationship between a writer, Jamie, and an actor, Cathy, over the course of their five-year relationship鈥攆rom when they first meet to their marriage and divorce. The musical is entirely sung through, with each character alternating in their songs. It also employs an ingenuous narrative device; Jamie sings his songs from the beginning of their relationship to their breakup, while Cathy begins from the dissolution and goes backwards to the happy beginnings. The only time the two interact is on their wedding day鈥攁 metaphor for how there are two sides to every relationship.
In the late '90s, Brown was married to Theresa O'Neill, whom he had met through his mentor, Harold Prince (O'Neill was Prince's assistant). The dissolution of that marriage formed the basis for The Last Five Years. Though at the time of the show's premiere in 2001, Brown denied that the show was autobiographical, saying to 半岛体育 at the time: "Everything I write comes from my life. Obviously, I can't take it from somebody else's, I only know what resonates emotionally for me, presumably because I've experienced it. But I'm not narcissistic or sadistic enough to make the contents of my marriage a matter of public record, you know what I mean? That wasn't the aim of the piece. I think in writing a show about a couple that fall apart, I was hoping that I'd maybe be able to come to terms with that in my own life."
The Last Five Years first premiered at Chicago's Northlight Theatre, starring Norbert Leo Butz and Lauren Kennedy, May 23, 2001. It was directed by Daisy Prince, daughter of Hal Prince, and frequent Brown collaborator. It quickly became the best-selling show at the theatre in its history up until that point. Talks of a New York transfer quickly emerged, with Lincoln Center as the producer. But then O'Neill's lawyer sent a letter to Lincoln Center, saying that the musical potentially violated their divorce settlement that Brown would not create a character based on her. A potential lawsuit put a damper on LCT's plans to produce the musical. After some legal back-and-forth, the two parties settled on an agreement: Brown would remove any similarities between Cathy and O'Neill (which led him to in the show), and he would pay her legal fees.
In 2002, The Last Five Years received its much-anticipated New York premiere, at Off-Broadway's Minetta Lane Theatre, with Butz returning opposite Sherie Rene Scott (Kennedy left the show to do South Pacific at the National Theatre in London). The Last Five Years received mixed reviews from critics and closed after only two months, with talks of a potential Broadway transfer quickly disappearing.
But the show itself did not disappear. The Off-Broadway cast album was released in 2002, and it slowly caught on in musical theatre circles. As Brown told 半岛体育 in 2013: "I lived in Italy in 2005. When I came back, I found that I was very much in demand on college campuses. Everyone wanted to book me to come talk to their students and theatre groups. The show was also being done a lot. I was paying my mortgage with The Last Five Years. So sometime around there, I must've figured it was doing okay."
The show's done more than okay. In the two decades since its premiere, a number of actors have put their own stamp on the loving, flawed, combative Cathy and Jamie. Betsy Wolfe and Adam Kantor starred in a well-received revival Off-Broadway in 2013 (directed by Brown). A pre-Bridgerton Jonathan Bailey and Samantha Barks starred in a 2016 version in London. Tony winner Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry starred in a concert engagement in 2016. Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick starred in the 2014 film adaptation. And now, Tony winner Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas (of the Jonas Brothers) will be the next pair to share their lives together "for the next 10 minutes."
When asked a decade later if The Last Five Years was autobiographical, Brown had a slightly different answer: "It's not not autobiographical. On an emotional level, it's very autobiographical. I had a really tragic first marriage, so that part is true. Knowing anything about my own biography, you can't watch the show and not see a lot of parallels, but the specifics aren't autobiographical."
While the hyper-personal aspects of the musical makes for a juicy bit of musical theatre trivia, it's something more universal that has made The Last Five Years stand the test of time. Anyone who has been in a failed relationship can painfully relate. Though there have debates on whose "fault" it is that the relationship ends, there are no heroes and villains in The Last Five Years鈥攖here are only people.
Said Brown: I love that these characters have very full, honest emotional lives. A lot of musical theatre has to stint on those things, but I didn't write this for anybody but me. I had something I needed to say, which gave me freedom to write these characters as deeply as I could, so they're flawed but very recognizable. People see themselves very much in these characters."
See photos from the 2002 Off-Broadway and 2001 Chicago run of The Last Five Years below.
