Stage Review - The Last Five Years (5th Avenue / ACT)
Stage Review - The Last Five Years
Presented By: 5th Avenue Theatre / ACT Contemporary Theatre - Seattle, WA
Show Run: February 08 - March 16, 2025
Date Reviewed: Thursday, February 13, 2025
Run Time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
There’s a saying, “the best fiction comes from fact”. Of course that means that some of the most engaging stories being told in any medium are such because they are based at least in part on events, experiences, or emotions that actually happened. Such is the case with Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Last Five Years. The musical, which tells the story of the five-year whirlwind relationship of up and coming novelist Jamie Wellerstein and struggling actress Cathy Hiatt, is based largely on Brown’s own failed marriage. In fact, The Last Five Years had it’s own real life sequel as it was dragged into a legal battle between the playwright and his ex-wife, her claiming that the piece violated their non-disclosure agreement, and him charging her with interference in his creative process. This “ripped from reality” fiction is probably why the story resonates with so many, and why it’s been produced successfully in professional, regional, and community theaters around the country. The latest professional theatre to engage audiences with this fractured love story is the 5th Avenue Theatre, in their annual co-production with ACT Contemporary Theatre, in a production directed by Shermona Mitchell and running on stage at ACT’s Allen Theatre through March 16.
The Last Five Years works for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that touch of reality that I mentioned above, but it’s also in the telling, which is unlike any other love story out there. The show itself is a two-hander, just Jamie and Cathy on stage, but it’s told in contrasting chronological order, with Jamie’s story commencing at the hopeful beginning of the relationship and Cathy’s at the heartbreaking end. The audience watches as the two experience their relationship, traveling in opposite directions, meeting only at the halfway point in the show and then Cathy ending at the beginning and Jamie at the end. It’s almost like a Christopher Nolan film, but easier to follow!! The construction is brilliant, it’s all music, all sung, the only duet when the two timelines intersect, but each alternating song contrasting in tone so that while one character is contemplating the disintegration of their marriage, the other is looking to the future with hope and anticipation.
I’ve seen many versions of The Last Five Years, a few at the community theatre level, the Anna Kendrick/Jeremy Jordan 2014 film among others, and I must say that I came out of the opening night of this co-production from the 5th Avenue Theatre and ACT Contemporary Theatre feeling like I’ve never seen it before, like what I had just seen was something completely new. This production captures so much of the story’s emotion, so much of its humanity, and so much of its beauty, more than I’ve experienced in any other telling of this couple’s love story. Shermona is using two casts for this run, with Cassi Q. Kohl paired up as Cathy with Jeffery Wallace as Jamie, while Keola Kapulani Holt will be working with Coleman Cummings as Cathy and Jamie, respectively during other performances. For opening night, the audience had the pleasure of seeing Cassi and Jeffery in the roles.
The staging of the show fits perfectly in the round at ACT’s Allen Theatre, and with a live orchestra under the dual direction of R.J. Tancioco or Michael Nutting, depending on the particular performance, split up into three small “pits” triangulating the stage, it just feels right. Otherwise, Julia Hayes Welch has opted for simplicity in the scenic design, with minimal set pieces, a writing desk for novelist Jamie, and a few benches, chairs, and stools used by the actors. There are some surprises inside some of the pieces, and the half walls around those orchestra pits present other areas for sitting, but what a simpler design does, of course, is it allows the audience to focus on the actors. Less simple, though, is Andrew D. Smith’s lighting design, which uses a combination of spots and colors diffused by the wonderfully designed mobile-resembling pieces, my favorite part of the scenic design, suspended above the stage to illuminate the actors during their musical numbers, adding nuance to the required emotion for a particular song and scene. The creative team is filled out by Haley Parcher as sound designer and Ty Pyne with costuming. A note on Ty’s costuming, which I appreciate in a story like this, is that the costumes are layered, modular if you will, so that while Cassi and Jeffery wear a base later, a white dress and white shirt with brown pants, respectively, they can accessorize with jackets, sweaters, scarves, and more to reflect various stages of their relationship. I also like the color palette of the design, the earthy natural tones of it, especially as presented in what Jeffery’s Jamie wears, with browns and greens, and so forth.
With a simplistic design, and a presentation in the round, it’s the actors who are the real focus here, and it is unfortunate that I only get to see one pair of them in these roles, so I can’t speak to Keola and Coleman, I can only relate what I experienced with Cassi and Jeffery, and trust in my experience with seeing other work with Shermona at the helm (example - Sound Theatre’s 53% Of) and her casting to expect that the other pair are equally superb. And superb Cassi and Jeffery are.
Anyone who has been to any professional shows around Seattle over the last few years knows Cassi Q. Kohl and the versatility she brings to the stage. From her work as a singing eel in The Little Mermaid (5th Avenue), or the rebellious sister of the President in POTUS (ACT), or even Elle Woods’ oddball friend Enid in Legally Blonde (Village), there doesn’t seem to be anything Cassi can’t do. And in Taproot’s production of The Hello Girls, Cassi showed that she can also carry a show as a lead, which serves her well here because both of these actors are leaned on to deliver. But here, as Cathy in The Last Five Years, Cassi has reached an entirely new level in her acting. Vocally, the music that Jason Robert Brown asks the actors to perform requires a large range, and power at both ends of that range and in between. Cassi manages that all effortlessly, which I expected, but it’s the emotion that she brings to this character, seeming to reach into the innermost corners of her soul to pull out feelings I’ve never seen in her acting before that is the exhilarating part of her performance. These emotions come through in her vocals, which range from the joy and hope of a budding new relationship, to the heart wrenching despair of a breakup, and just about everything in between, while also being able to pull out some humor in her character’s audition number. But her best performance is not when she’s singing, it’s not even during one of her character’s numbers. During a scene late in the show, after actions have taken place from Jamie’s perspective that have set into motion the demise of their relationship, and while he reads an exerpt from his book, Cassi stands off to the side just moving slowly, deliberately, her character literally breaking apart emotionally on stage in real time in front of the audience. She doesn’t say a word, or sing a note, but I have never been moved so much by one performance by one actor on stage as much as I was by this few minutes of performance art from Cassi during this few minutes in The Last Five Years. This is such a stellar piece, if audiences didn’t love Cassi Q. Kohl before The Last Five Years, there’s no excuse for them not to after.
It takes two to tango, though, and on the other side is Jeffery Wallace. Jeffery matches Cassi in energy, vocally in power and range, and his presentation of the joy at their new relationship is wonderful, especially in contrast to the despair that Cassi’s Cathy is presenting. I admire both of these actors in their ability to come out immediately after something that is heavy and jump right into a fun, lighthearted, and hopeful number. It takes a great deal of focus and dedication to the material to be able to that so well, and Jeffery is a master at this. But as good as he is at the joyful part, just as Cassi is so wonderful emotionally, Jeffery’s best work is during the pair of songs “If I DIdn’t Believe in You” where his Jamie is fighting for his marriage and “Nobody Needs to Know”, sung clearly after a moment of indiscretion on his character’s part. It’s in this second number where he brings so much emotional tension to the room, the audience can feel it from him, like he just wants to scream and is deploying every ounce of his energy to hold that in, subduing it right below the surface. It’s such a deeply moving scene, and along with Cassi’s performance helps to build The Last Five Years to its heartbreaking, but inevitable conclusion. Oh, and for the Hamilton fans out there, that last line in “Say No to This” in Hamilton has a familiar ring to it that just may be a reference back to this number.
Adaptations of popular musicals are a dime a dozen, but every once in a while one comes along that feels brand new, that feels like a fresh telling that surprises even those that are familiar with the characters and their story. Such is the co-production of The Last Five Years, from the 5th Avenue Theatre and ACT Contemporary Theatre. This is a show that is so well performed that it will reach into your soul and bring out the happiest and most hopeful of joys and the most heartbreaking and agonizing of despairs, all while making you appreciate experiencing actors reaching new heights in the mastery of their craft.
The Last Five Years, a co-production from The 5th Avenue Theatre and ACT Contemporary Theatre runs on stage at ACT through March 16. For more information on the show, visit https://5thavenue.org/ or https://www.acttheatre.org/2024-25-season/the-last-five-years/.
Photo credit: Rosemary Dai Ross
