Review: The Last Five Years

**Note: If you're a transfer from my old blog, this is a recent post I copied and pasted. I put a lot of time and effort into writing it so I figured I'd share it again!**


Last night the husband and I saw a one-act musical called "The Last Five Years" at Krannert. We wanted to see if because I am a big fan of Jason Robert Brown, the writer and composer of this show.

Let me preface this by saying we have seen Summer Studio Theater shows at Krannert for three years now. The first year, we saw two shows and they were both great. Last year we were left sorely disappointed by the calibur of actors. There were a few true professionals but the rest were undergrads or untrained community theater actors. Paying $30 bucks for a baby-sitter plus tickets, we felt we were cheated last year. So this year we decided to see just one show - and we might not have seen any at all had "The Last Five Years" not been on the schedule.

"The Last Five Years" is performed by just two actors, playing the married couple of Jamie and Cathy. They recount the details of their five year relationship, beginning with their first date and ending with their divorce. But unlike other romance stories, Jamie tells his side of the story from beginning to end and Cathy tells it backwards, from the divorce to the first date. The actors interact only once, in the middle of the show. In the number "The Next Ten Minutes," Jamie begins by having his half of a conversation with Cathy. Finally the two characters appear on stage together, taking their marriage vows. Then Jamie turns away and Cathy, still moving backwards in time, has her half of the conversation with Jamie. Hard to explain, but really it was one of the highlights of the show.

The score and the book were awesome. Jason Robert Brown has a way of taking slang and common conversation and making it powerful and touching with the help of a gorgeous piano score. I really would have liked to see this performed by true professionals because I think the songs would normally be soaring and resonating. Unfortunately the two actors we saw at Krannert didn't have the voices to pull it off.

Jamie was played by a BFA student who could hit the notes but couldn't support them. Although he was on pitch, his higher notes sounded strained. His acting was pretty good though, and I found his expressions of joy and pain to be quite believable.

The woman who played Cathy was a local middle school music teacher and singer/songwriter. Her low voice was perfect for some of these songs...but her legit (high) voice just was not there. It was obvious the minute she hit her break that she had no training, support or confidence. Did the music director not test her on the higher songs at all? And how can a music teacher have no vocal training? I kept wondering how they cast her in this show. She could belt higher than I can (that's actually not saying much) but her legit voice was shakey and unsupported. It totally disrupted the audience's belief in her character. I had a hard time concentrating on the lyrics and spent a lot of time wondering if the director auditioned people or just casted his friends.

Also neither actor, especially the woman, appeared to have any training in movement (dance). This was also very distracting, as both of them slumped and dragged themselves around the stage and the woman playing Cathy was pigeon-toed. The man's posture was less bothersome; perhaps because it seemed Cathy had a lot of brooding, wistful scenes, where the actress sort of slumped over while lamenting her loss.

The costumes were really terrible. It's as if the costumer took all the trends from the last few years and threw them together while also over-accessorizing. Again, it distracted me from the characters and the plot. The piano accompaniment, which I assume was performed by the show's music director, was flawless, making me yearn for stronger voices to showcase the composer's music. Lighting and set were minimal and effective, and the choreography was adequate given the non-dancers in the show.

Okay, so will we go to Krannert's Summer Studio Theater next year? Probably not, unless they do a show we really want to see. We have spent some money there this year, seeing Ann Hampton Callaway and Garrison Keilor. So maybe we'll save up next summer and hope for a little higher quality show in 2010.