Theater Review: THE LAST FIVE YEARS (The Sierra Madre Playhouse)

THE LAST FIVE YEARS AT SIERRA MADRE
CAN BE SEEN IN DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS

Last weekend, Sierra Madre Playhouse opened what seems like a bewildering number of performance configurations of their new revival production of Jason Robert Brown’s 2001 musical The Last Five Years. The two-hander is double cast and also offers two types of accompaniments: piano or orchestra. Fans of the musical can design-your-own experience and it practically begs you to see it again with a different arrangement.

The musical tells the story of Cathy and Jamie’s five-year relationship, from their meeting to their breakup, but with a major storytelling twist: Jamie’s side is told chronologically, and Cathy’s is in reverse. They alternate songs, jumping back and forth in time, only to meet in the middle for an engagement scene. It begins with Cathy moping after Jamie has moved out, followed by Jamie singing about how he just met a non-Jewish girl. Throughout the course of the show, we learn that he’s a writer and she’s an actress. She falls increasingly in love with him while he simultaneously falls out of love with her.

Opening night’s cast was Jackie Bonsignore as the insecure Cathy and Jayde Mitchell as self-absorbed Jamie. (They are double cast with Byran Mittelstadt as Jamie  and Margaret Berkowitz as Cathy.) Their skill and confidence in singing Brown’s complicated music went far in trying to overcome the inherent disjointed and unbalanced nature of the show. They were able to convey some degree of affection for each other while still being in separate worlds, though a mid-show kiss hinted at how in lust the characters were. However, Bonsignore and Mitchell, not unlike their characters, were a mismatched pair. Some of it is due to the show; Cathy is nervous and quiet, while Jamie gets to be a vocal powerhouse. During the first half of the show, when Cathy is more withdrawn into herself, Bonsignore’s singing was pretty but difficult to hear, whereas Mitchell’s voice boomed out, and when it came to the big engagement scene, where the characters finally have a real duet, he practically blasted her off the stage. Beyond that, there were times when each really shone. Bonsignore was completely satisfying with sharp comic and vulnerable timing with “When You Come Home to Me” and “A Summer in Ohio,“ the high points in the evening for me. Mitchell bounded all over the stage, but was most interesting during “A Miracle Would Happen” as Jamie struggles to sort his feelings.

Josh Shaw, Founding Artistic Director and CEO of Pacific Opera Project, does his usual double duty as director and set designer. It’s an unfussy production, a cross between a full staging and a concert performance. On opposite ends at the front of the stage are Cathy and Jamie’s fully decorated rooms. There’s a raised platform near the rear. A blank screen with designer Grace Berry‘s wash of colored light fills the space in between.

An imposing grand piano (and string players if you go on certain performances) takes up most of the space off to the side, but is kept in shadow, lending a classy feel to the affair. Music Director Joshua Foy on piano led a six-piece string ensemble, all unamplified and sounding wonderful. Most performances are going to be with just the piano, but Foy’s solo portions were substantial and satisfying enough that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend going if you can’t make it to performances with the full ensemble, which is made up of Jessica Chen, violin; Alexander Elliott Miller, guitar; Jon Lee Keenan, bass; and
Derek Stein and Betsy Rettig on cellos.

Productions of The Last Five Years have been ubiquitous since its 2001 premiere, but I’ve only now gotten around to visiting it. There were parts that I liked quite a bit, in spite of the sameness of a lot of the music. The ending was beautiful. I found the musical itself uneven overall. I was expecting the story to play out similarly with both characters, such as both characters having dramatically intense breakup songs, a climax at the beginning and another at the end. Instead, Jamie gets dramatic fireworks near the show’s end, while Cathy takes it literally sitting down near the beginning, which would be her climax. And it feels like there’s entirely too much Jamie, though you may like that, given that handsome young Mitchell already had his own cheering section in the audience.

Even though the musical did not win me over at first sight, it was a solid production. If I were a fan, I would be tempted to see the Playhouse’s other combinations of actors and musicians just for the pleasure of different interpretations.