The Last Five Years charts the five-year relationship of Jamie and Cathy, two 20-something New Yorkers who fall head over heels in love. But in a city where professional and personal passions collide, navigating the waters of love and matrimony can sometimes prove to be too much.
What is the Story of The Last Five Years?
Jason Robert Brown’s popular 2001 musical The Last Five Years tells the story of two twenty-somethings who fall in love—and out of it again—over the course of a five year relationship. Jamie, an up-and-coming writer, struggles to balance his sudden success with his increasingly tumultuous love life, while Cathy, an aspiring actress, deals with the frustrations of her own stalled career while watching her husband from the sidelines. Jamie tells his side of the tale in chronological order, while Cathy relives the relationship backwards, with both stories intersecting in the middle, on their wedding day. The musical features memorable songs “Still Hurting,” “Shiksa Goddess,” “The Next Ten Minutes,” “Goodbye Until Tomorrow” and more.
"I can’t think of any better way to celebrate the arrival of spring than by spending 90 exhilarating minutes with ‘The Last Five Years,’ Jason Robert Brown’s giddily sorrowful eulogy for a brief marriage."
Bloomberg
Jeremy Gerard
"The production, directed this time by the composer-author himself, remains an engaging chamber musical infused with intimate, emotionally perceptive, nonstop songs in which the woman tells their story backward in time from the breakup and the guy tells his side from the smitten beginning."
Newsday
Linda Winer
"[Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott's] big shoes are filled capably this time around by Adam Kantor and Betsy Wolfe as Jamie Wellerstein and Cathy Hiatt, the novelist and actress whose last kiss is the show’s striking first image."
The New York Times
Charles Isherwood