THE LAST FIVE YEARS • A Musical Timeline of Alignment & Relationships

Pit & Balcony’ Spring Musical theatrical production of The Last Five Years is an emotionally powerful and deeply intimate journey into a five-year relationship between a rising young novelist (Jamie) and a struggling actress (Cathy) who fall in and out of love over the course of five years. What makes it so compelling and mesmerizing, however, is how their journey is structured.

While their struggles, joys, hopes, ambitions, and heartache are told through a chronological timeline, the unconventional structure of this play is how the true timeline is one of Kairos, which is defined not my minutes, hours, or day, but by alignment - a non-linear structure where his story is told and moves forward from the beginning of their relationship, while her story is simultaneously told and moves backwards, the two characters only meeting once at their wedding in the middle of the show.

Set for performances that run from May 7-9 & 15-17 at 7:30 PM, this sung-through script and entirely novel production first premiered back in 2002 Off-Broadway, went through a 2014 film adaptation and has enjoyed success with recent Broadway revivals.

Written and composed by Jason Robert Brown, who won Drama Desk Awards for the score, what makes these themes of love, career struggles, personal ambition, and the challenges of a relationship when paths diverge even more interesting is that The Last Five Years was inspired by Brown's real-life failed marriage to actress  Theresa O'Neill, who sued Brown n on the grounds that the story of the musical violated non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements within their divorce decree by representing her relationship with Brown too closely.

Brown, in turn, sued O'Neill for interfering with his creative work and his creative process. As part of the legal settlement for both suits, Brown removed all references to Cathy being Irish Catholic and changed the song "I Could Be in Love with Someone Like You" to "Shiksa Goddess" in order to reduce the similarity between the character and O'Neill.

The style of this script draws on a number of musical genres, including pop, jazz, classical, Klezmer, Latin, Blues, Rock, and Folk. The orchestration consists of piano, acoustic guitar, fretless bass, cello, tubular bell, violin, and doubling cymbal.

For Pit & Balcony Director, Amy Spadafore, who is also directing this production of The Last Five Years, she quickly states her fondness for the way this play is structured. “The original director for this play had to have knee surgery and the recovery was going to take longer than expected, so I ended up moving in the Director’s seat, which is fine,” she explains. “I am famously not a fan of musicals, even though I love show tunes; but if not my favorite musical this one is definitely way up there, not only because of its structure but because it’s also very relatable. Anyone who is or has ever been in a relationship can relate to a lot of the stuff happening on stage.”

Apart from its inventive narrative structure, musically although songs are sung through every scene in the play, it doesn’t function exactly the way an opera would. “Every scene the characters sing a different song, only the songs are stylistically varied with different types of music,” Amy explains. “Jamie’s songs have a lof off Blues and Jazz influences, whereas Cathy’s songs are more music theatre inspired - there’s even kind of a Vaudevillian one.  Some research the actors did noted how Jamie’s songs were more technical, probably because of his career as a writer and playwright; while Cathy’s songs are a little more simple and inspired by musical theatre, seeing as she’s a struggling actress.”

With a gifted and remarkably strong cast, Amy says they had so many strong auditions that it became very hard to cast the show, which gave her the idea to double cast the production. “We have four actors and all of them will perform three times, only with different partners,” she explains.  “We’ll have two main couples and then they switch.”

“With this show we are really leaning into the idea of memory and the unreliable narrator, showing how two different people could be in the exact same relationship and remember it in two totally different ways,” she continues “We’re trying to portray that by saying it doesn’t matter who’s on stage, memory is unreliable. We always look like the hero in our own memories, right? And you see that in these scenes because each actor views themselves as the hero, but I challenge our audiences to determine whether there even is. hero or a villain in this story.”

“With this upcoming production the two Cathy’s will be performed by Danessa Hellus, making her grand return to Pit & Balcony’s stage since last appearing back in 2019, and Erica Close, who also hasn’t been back here in a while,” reflects Amy. “And then we in the role of Jamie we have Spencer Beyerlein and Matthew Howe, so we have four killer vocalists that will definitely knock and blow your sock off; and I can guarantee that Spencer’s Jamie is going to be very different from Matthew’s, so people should definitely come more than once just to see the different visions for each of the characters. I’m giving the cast a lot of leeway to interpret their characters.”

The live musical band performing for this production will be under the direction of Mason Sagesh, which will consist of a string quartet with a violin and cello, piano, bass guitar, and no drums. “The piano manages most of the rhythm instead of the drums, and is really the primary lead instrument - we have Joan Kennett doing that for us.”

With such a top-notch team Amy says the biggest challenge involved with this production was the decision to double-cast it. “We have to rehearse everything twice, but luckily it’s a relatively short show,” she notes. “By the time it finishes it clocks in at around 75-minutes, and then we have a 15-minute intermission, so will be around 90 minutes long and give everybody time to get back to Oracle Brewery for last call!”

The Last 5 Years will run at Pit & Balcony Community Theatre from May 7-9 (Thursday - Saturday)  & 15-17^th.  (Saturday - Sunday). Showtimes are 7:30 PM with Sunday 3:00 PM matinee. Tickets are only $20.00 and available online at PitandBalconyTheatre.com or phoning the box office at 989.754.6587.