Composer Jason Robert Brown was something of a wunderkind, winning a Tony Award before the age of 30 for his rapturous, symphonic score for the 1999 musical Parade. He followed that critical hit with a two-person song cycle, The Last Five Years, that has had multiple revivals Off Broadway and earned an outsize reputation among theater kids since its 2001 debut, particularly following a 2014 movie adaptation starring Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick. It’s easy to understand the show’s appeal, both because of Brown’s series of melodically rich story-songs and for the depiction of two twentysomething creative types falling in and out of love.
But The Last Five Years also offers some technical challenges given its unusual time structure: The two performers, Jamie and Cathy, alternate songs, with his told chronologically from his first crush on her, while hers unfold in reverse, from processing his break-up letter to the winsome moment she first receives a bouquet of tulips from him. As with Sondheim’s backward-marching Merrily We Roll Along, an audience’s appreciation (and comprehension) depends on being able to pinpoint where the two heroes are at any particular moment during the one-act show — a prerequisite that gets muddled in director Whitney White’s handsome but imbalanced new Broadway revival.
In most productions, Cathy and Jamie only share the stage and harmonize together in the middle, during the lone duet charting the moments just before, during, and after they recite their wedding vows. Here, though, we see Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas frequently on stage together, sometimes reacting to what the other has just said and sometimes lingering nearby in their own timeframe apparently oblivious to the other. It’s a curious directorial choice that flattens the tension that would otherwise build up from more isolated, individualized points of view. As a result, that central duet seems to be drained of any sort of sexual charge (or significant onstage romantic chemistry) and no longer jibes neatly with the lyrics. The song is bookended with lines about strolling through Central Park, but here the second set of lines come while both stars are clutched in an embrace in their honeymoon bed instead of when one promenades near the Natural History Museum. (David Zinn designed the stylized urban set, which is lit in his-and-hers colors by Stacey Derosier.)
The staging may be an attempt to boost the stage time for the chart-topping pop Jonas Brothers member whose presence is likely driving ticket sales, but it also has the curious effect of highlighting his vocal weaknesses compared to his powerhouse co-star. Jonas is a capable pop singer who occasionally strains to flip into his head voice, particularly early on in the show. (His performance improves over time, bringing some tonal depth and genuine regret to his confessional climax, “Nobody Needs to Know.”) But it’s hard for Jonas to compete with Warren, a Tony winner for 2018’s Tina: The Tina Turner Musical blessed with a set of pipes that can rattle the rafters of the Hudson Theatre while also delivering a silky sultriness that makes her a truly irresistible “shiksa goddess.”
Perhaps because of the casting imbalance, it’s harder to grasp what Warren’s Cathy, an aspiring actress whose career never seems to achieve liftoff, sees in Jonas’s Jamie. The character’s a kind of stand-in for Brown himself, here transformed into a wunderkind novelist who sells his first novel at age 23 and sees it become a critical darling and instant bestseller. Jamie pretty quickly emerges as a philandering jerk, though Jonas is a hottie in Clark Kent glasses who manages to soften some of the character’s very rough edges. And Brown has also handed Jamie songs in which he gets to explore his inner life and share his struggles with fidelity.
While Jamie sings about his nice Jewish family, his agent and publisher and many, many literary fan girls, Cathy mostly sings about the humiliation of auditions and life in regional summer stock — or living in the shadow of a more successful partner who repeatedly prioritizes his own needs over their relationship. Soon after we meet her, she sings about settling for second-banana status (“Look what he can do, and I’m part of that”) — while later in the show we learn that she once harbored a determination to stand on her own and resist remolding herself to fit any man’s needs. Warren elevates that number, “I Can Do Better Than That,” to become the evening’s real showstopper — a statement of liberation and self-actualization that takes on deeper shades of meaning since we know already know how she’s compromised those ideals with Jamie.
To be honest, Warren elevates the entire revival — she even, improbably, offers a convincing portrayal of a struggling actress’s insecurities in the hilarious inner-monologue-heavy number “Climbing Uphill.” (“I’m up every morning at six and standing in line with two hundred girls, who are younger and thinner than me, who have already been to the gym,” she sings — making you wonder why this Cathy wouldn’t bowl over casting directors as easily as she does us.) Brown’s score sounds terrific, newly re-orchestrated for a nine-member band that captures his eclectic mix of pop and theater styles. It’s a treat to have The Last Five Years on Broadway after all these years, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the show could do better than this. ★★★☆☆
THE LAST FIVE YEARS
Hudson Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through June 22 for $63 to $322
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