The Last Five Years is a beautiful musical. With an original way of telling their love story, this show is really memorable. Here’s my The Last Five Years theatre review.
Overview and plot synopsis of The Last Five Years
The Last Five Years is a musical written by Jason Robert Brown. It’s a two-character musical that tells the story of the rise and fall of the romantic relationship between Jamie and Cathy. Jamie is a rising novelist, and Cathy is a struggling actress. The musical tells the story of the ups and downs of their relationships and also their careers. My The Last Five Years theatre review will first discuss the show’s structure and plot, so there will be a few plot spoilers in the first section.
The Last Five Years is a musical that is entirely in song – there aren’t any spoken conversations or dialogue, and instead it is just songs, led by either Jamie or Cathy.
What makes this show really unique and memorable is its storytelling structure. The show starts with a song from Cathy, at the end of their relationship. She sings the song ‘I’m still hurting’, showing her heartbreak at the end of the relationship, when Jamie and Cathy have broken up.
The next song is a lively song from Jamie, at the start of their relationship. He’s full of happiness in the early days of his relationship with Cathy.
The show progresses with Cathy’s story told in reverse, starting with the break up and ending with their first date. Alongside this, Jamie’s story unfolds chronologically from the beginning of their relationship to the end. Each character takes turns to lead a song that progresses their story from their own timeline. The two timelines intersect only once, at their wedding day, before diverging again.
Through both of their songs, we learn about the rise and fall of their relationship. As Jamie’s career takes off, he fulfils his dream of getting his book published. He enjoys revelling in the success, but struggles with the temptations that come from his newfound fame. And towards the end of the show, we learn that he gives in to temptation and has an affair, and it’s his choice to leave Cathy. Meanwhile, Cathy struggles with her acting career, struggling to cope with the rejection when she auditions for roles. She struggles with resentment towards Jamie’s success and her own growing insecurity. The musical explores how professional triumphs and losses can intersect with the highs and lows of a relationship, and ultimately cause the downfall of a once strong relationship.
What I liked about The Last Five Years
The non-chronological story telling
I enjoyed the show The Last Five Years. The non-chronological storytelling was really unique, and made the show really memorable. It made it so much more than just a standard love story. The non-linear structure could feel a bit confusing at times – I’ll talk more about this later – but on the whole, I enjoyed it, and felt like it gave an extra depth to the story.
I thought that the wedding scene was lovely. This was the one scene where their timelines converged, so they were both telling this part of the story. It worked really well to have this scene as the meeting point in their timeline, before the timelines diverged again. It was a lovely scene, and you could really feel the happiness from both actors.
The ending of The Last Five Years
The ending of the show was my favourite part of the show. The end of the show is incredibly moving with the juxtaposition of Jamie’s and Cathy’s opposite timelines. At the end of the show, Jamie is packing a box to leave, at the painful moment of his leaving Cathy after having an affair. However, Cathy concludes the show at the beginning of their relationship. She’s singing about the hopeful spark of new love, full of happiness that she’s met Jamie. They’re both singing ‘goodbye’ – he’s saying it forever, but she’s saying goodbye until tomorrow, when she’s excited to see him again.
It’s heart breaking to see her joy and optimism, right next to Jamie’s despair, knowing that she’s going to go from that moment of pure joy, to the despair as well, five years later. We’ve already seen her despair at Jamie’s leaving, in her first scene. So we know the heartbreak that’s coming for her, and we’re seeing Jamie packing his box to leave. But at the beginning of her story, she doesn’t know that heartbreak is to come.
It’s a really moving ending, showing how fragile a relationship can be, and how much things can change in just five years. It’s heart breaking to see Cathy’s joy and hopeful optimism, when we know how it ends, and we’re seeing Jamie pack his box to leave. This final scene really resonated with anyone in the audience who has felt the pain of a marriage or relationship falling apart and ending.
Music and staging
The music in The Last Five Years is really beautiful. I particularly liked the piano and the cello music. The musicians were on stage, so the music felt central to the show.
Throughout the show, I generally preferred Cathy’s songs to Jamie’s. Hers were generally a bit more emotional, and more my type of music. Jamie’s songs were often a bit more jolly and almost more jazz-like. But overall both performers were excellent, and the songs were good. As the entire musical is sung, it’s definitely super important for a show like this to have good songs and good performers.
Both characters acted the story well through their songs. They made the plot fairly clear, even without being able to use any dialogue. The costume changes were good, and helped make it clear that we were jumping to another time frame.
There weren’t lots of props of complicated staging, but what they did was good. There was a clever scene where they turned part of the stage into a bed, for a scene showing Jamie and Cathy in their first year of happiness together. And then, when the show moved onto Jamie’s story, it showed him in that same bed having an affair. It was a clever way of staging to show how quickly things can change – from the perfect happiness of Jamie and Cathy, to an affair, in the same bed, just a few years later.
What I wasn’t so sure about
Overall, my The Last Five Years theatre review is positive, and I enjoyed the show. At first, I wasn’t completely convinced. But by the end, I enjoyed it – definitely helped my the really moving and memorable final scene.
The non-linear structure
However, at the start of the show, I did find it a bit confusing. It’s the type of show that makes a lot more sense once you get to the end, and you can join up all the pieces of the puzzle. But at the start of the show, you’re getting different puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together yet. It felt a bit frustrating to not be able to understand it fully straight away.
At the start of the show, Cathy is upset about the break up, but we don’t really know what happened between them to make the relationship end. We don’t fully understand it until the end of the show, when his story gets to that point. The same problem is there with his story at the beginning – he’s singing about the start of their relationship, but we don’t really understand that fully until the end, when her story gets there and joins up the gaps.
In a way, this non-linear story telling is clever and original. And it definitely works in the final scene, when they can juxtapose her happiness with the sorrow of him leaving. But the non-linear structure can be a bit confusing. And it’s a bit frustrating at the beginning because you feel like you’re only getting half the story and you want to understand everything right away.
Involvement of the musicians
Throughout the show, but particularly later in the show, there were some scenes where the musicians got involved with the story. I felt like this was a bit weird. Sometimes it worked ok, such as just having the guitarists step up to act like Jamie’s friends in a bar.
But there was one scene where Jamie fell off the stage drunk, and all the musicians stopped and asked if he was ok. For a second, I thought that Jamie had actually fallen of the stage and they were all breaking character – the pianist in particular shouted out ‘are you ok’ in a very genuine, realistic way. I then realised that it was part of the show. But for a few seconds, it felt like there had been a mistake in the show – and that’s never a good feeling, to think that an actor has actually fallen over and the fourth wall is broken.
Getting the musicians involved also felt a bit weird towards the end of the show, when the cello player suddenly seemed to be a sort-of character in the show. She became the woman Jamie was having an affair with. And at one point, she left her cello and got into bed with him. And then after that scene, she went back to her cello. I can see in a way why they did that – they could show Jamie’s affair easily, without needing an additional cast member to just come on stage for that one scene. But it still felt a bit weird when Jamie got into bed with the cello player. It probably would have been better if she’d stayed with her cello and they found a different way to show that scene.
Character interactions
There also wasn’t loads of interaction between Jamie and Cathy through the show. In some ways, that was inevitable, because they were telling their story on different timelines. And it clearly had to be either Jamie’s song, or Cathy’s song. But at lot of the time, one of them would either be off stage if it wasn’t their song, or just to one side, staying still. And on the few occasions they did interact, the one not singing would be more of a prop in their story. It mostly worked ok, but maybe a bit more interaction would have been nice.
Would I recommend The Last Five Years
Overall, my The Last Five Years theatre review is positive, so I would recommend going to see this musical. The non-linear story telling makes it different, and memorable. There are a lot of great songs, great performances, and emotional moments – especially the ending. I enjoyed the musical and would recommend going to see it.
Hope you enjoyed my The Last Five Years theatre review! Check out my other theatre reviews for more shows in the West End, across the UK and the world.
