Theatre review: The Last Five Years

When The Last Five Years originally ran at Southwark Playhouse in March it became my first show this year to fall victim to illness - although that was because the performance I'd booked was cancelled due to non-COVID-related cast ill health. There was no time to reschedule before it joined the rest of the UK's theatre in limbo, but with socially-distanced performances inching their way back to the stage it was an obvious candidate to make a return: Jason Robert Brown’s musical features a bubble-friendly cast of only two, who barely even have to interact as they inhabit the same story, but almost never at the same time: Jamie (Oli Higginson) takes us through his five-year relationship with Cathy (Molly Lynch) from the excitement of realising he might have met the "Shiksa Goddess" of his dreams, through their marriage and up to the point of him leaving her a letter asking for a divorce.

His songs alternate with Cathy's, but her story begins at the end, finding that letter Jamie will eventually leave her, and each song takes her further back in time until she ends at the same first flush of romance that he started with.

The strength of The Last Five Years comes from Brown's songs and high concept rather than his characters: There's an inevitable bittersweetness to working through the stages of a relationship we know is doomed, but it's not one we particularly care about seeing work, and not just because the format means little onstage interaction between the pair. Cathy is a fairly slight character, needy and utterly broken by the fact that her husband's writing career flourishes in a way her acting doesn't, and she's still the more sympathetic of the two. Jamie on the other hand is a textbook charming but arrogant douchebag, although we do see his side of things more once he reaches the point in the story where the breakup begins - what Cathy sees as his lack of support for her failing career he sees as her not seeing his attempts to support her, and begrudging him his own success.

Lynch and Higginson are charming and talented enough to make up for some of what's lacking in their characters, and they bring enough emotional heft to their songs that we can still empathise with them: Early on Lynch's "I'm a Part of That" is a standout, as Cathy goes from trying to find empowerment in her part in Jamie's literary success (she's likely the inspiration for his hit novel) to seeing herself as an incidental sideline; Jamie's "Nobody Needs to Know" near the end is strikingly dramatic. Lee Newby's largely monochrome design centres the couple around a sometimes-revolving piano (I've seen some descriptions overselling this as an actor-musician production; the actors do play occasionally but George Dyer's mask-wearing band above the stage are doing most of the work) and Jonathan O’Boyle's production makes use of the simplicity to come up with some subtly striking moments. With the proposal and wedding being the point at which the timelines converge, the ring is passed from Cathy to Jamie to reflect that he's now the one whose story takes place while they're married; and when Cathy gets to the start of the story she hugs the sheets on which they had sex - the sheets on which we've already seen Jamie cheat on her a few years down the line.

O'Boyle also tries to make up for the lack of much interaction between the characters with scenes like Cathy singing to Jamie on a laptop when she's stuck in an acting job in Ohio*, a scene which was probably there when this production first opened in March but which obviously is even more familiar to everyone now. Mercifully that's the only topical thing about the show itself: Southwark Playhouse's own attempts to reopen with social distancing are admirable and can't have been cheap - they've had to remove a couple of rows of course but perspex screens, rearranged between every performance according to how many seats were booked together, mean the two rows that are left can be packed while still giving personal space. It's not ideal, and gives a weird coldness and distance - one way or another, socially distanced theatre just isn't going to be quite the same experience as usual. But you could do worse, as thematic links go, than a show whose protagonists never quite connect, literally or figuratively, in the way that they should, and physical and emotional distance aside this is an evening of strong musical numbers and a warmth that comes through a situation that isn't necessarily conducive to it.

The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown is booking until the 14th of November at Southwark Playhouse's Large Theatre; a streaming option will be available from the 26th to the 29th of November.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.

*it struck me how overwhelmingly snobbish American theatre is towards regional and touring theatre; unless all productions outside of New York are genuinely full of rejects from AHS: Freak Show there's a pervasive trope about them that seems to come back time and again. Obviously, Broadway is the dream in America just as the West End is here, but regardless of what actors and creatives may really think I've never seen the same kind of open contempt for theatre outside of London in British writing. Here, it's notable that Cathy's season in Ohio is successful enough that she's offered a second one, but The Last Five Years unequivocally portrays her acting career as a failure