Recently a major motion picture, The Last Five Years is an award winning musical from Jason Robert Brown. Starting and ending with the beginning of a passionate love affair, the unique style of storytelling and infectious score makes this one of America's best modern musicals.
The lovers are Cathy and Jamie. Actress Cathy’s story starts with the end of their relationship following their tale backwards to when she first fell in love with her young talented lover. Novelist Jamie’s story begins with their first passionate encounter and heads forward towards heartache.
The Last Five Years stars Katie Birtill, who took the title role in Sweet Charity last autumn with a talented live band creating Cathy and Jamie’s world as it crumbles and reforms around them.
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This was a matinee on a cold and wet afternoon when I'd be doing little else, thankfully, as it really wasn't one I'd recommend.
The two performers were very good, their singing voices are excellent and they definitely had a brilliant connection between them.........but the story was boring, many missed opportunities for instance when he sang that this relationship is breaking his mother's heart but didn't really explain why, only because I'm Jewish did I pick up the slight hint that he was marrying out of his faith, but it was such a subtle hint that I'm sure most others would never have noticed. Also none of the songs were memorable as they were just singing dialogue they could have spoken.
The two friends I went with felt exactly the same as me, however it looked like nearly all the seats had bums on and the final applause sounded like everyone enjoyed it.
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