Bubbling up with Helena

My thoughts on the Broadway production of The Last Five Years can be summed up by Jamie’s words from the show, “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. It’s what I wanted.” Yes, I did want this show that has been beloved to me for nearly two decades to come to Broadway, but maybe not quite in this way.

The Last Five Years is a semi-autobiographical musical by Jason Robert Brown that is based on his first marriage with Teresa O’Neill. In the show, Jamie (Nick Jonas) tells the story of their failed relationship from the beginning while Cathy (Adrienne Warren) tells the story of their relationship from the end. They meet in the middle for their wedding, and then continue on their divergent timelines.

Warren has blown me away every time I’ve seen her perform since I saw her in Bring It On back in the day. This was no exception. Her rendition of “See I’m Smiling” brought me to tears. Her one-sided argument with an invisible Jamie had a perfect build to it and then a fall to the gut punch of, “How can you stand there straight and tall and see I’m crying and not do anything at all?” Her “Summer in Ohio” was delightfully energetic and fun (although I could have done without some of the gimmicky prop moments). Hearing her sing “I Can do Better than That,” one of my all time musical theater songs, was worth the price of admission alone.

Listen, I love the song “Jealous” as much as the next person, but I don’t think Jonas was the best choice for Jamie. First of all, he’s not Jewish, and Jamie sings the words, “I’m your Hebrew slave at your service.” He also does a Yiddish accent in one of his songs, and Jonas’s accent made it clear that he has no idea what that sounds like. There are many talented Jewish actors they could have cast here (Zach Piser and Andrew Barth Feldman come to mind immediately). Jonas is a pop singer, and that was abundantly clear hearing him sing this score. Of course, some of the music is poppy, but it sounded like he was straining for some of the notes, and he added a little too many “woahs” to some of the songs. Having said all that, I thought his acting performance was mostly serviceable.

I’ve always been a firm defender of the fact that both Jamie and Cathy are at fault for the rupture of their relationship. However, this time watching the story, I changed my mind and couldn’t help by feel that Jamie is the one at fault. I mean, you don’t have someone sing, “I will not lose because you can’t win” if you don’t want them to be at least a little bit the villain, right? Cathy’s line, “I tend to follow in his stride. Instead of side by side, I take his cue” made me very uncomfortable this time. Hearing those words sung by an exceptionally beautiful and talented black woman about a successful white man just didn’t feel right and added to that feeling for me that Jamie is in the wrong here.

One of the coolest elements of The Last Five Years is that the characters only meet in the middle for their wedding. They are speaking to each other throughout the show, but you mostly only see one of them at a time. The director of this production, Whitney White, decided to change that. She added Warren into “The Schmuel Song,” one of Jamie’s numbers and had her reacting to the story he tells. Warren also was present onstage during Jamie’s “If I Didn’t Believe in You.” It was strange because for some of the song, Jonas was acting like he could actually see her there and was directing the song at her, and for some parts, he was acting like she wasn’t there. This for me took away the power of the wedding scene because it wasn’t the only moment they interacted onstage anymore.

I listen to the music of The Last Five Years all of the time, but I don’t usually listen to it all the way through and stick to my favorites. Seeing it play out, I was struck by how cool the way the show works is. The audience experiences what happens when Jamie visits Cathy doing a show in Ohio and then almost 50 minutes later, learns that Jamie woke up in bed with another woman that morning. Ouch. In a less serious moment, we hear Jamie answering Cathy’s questions about what they’re walking past on the Upper West Side (the Dakota, the Museum of Natural History) before hearing what Cathy’s questions are. Brown knows what he’s doing.

If you are a diehard fan of this show like I am, you might notice that there have been several lyric changes made in this production. Some of them are changes like taking out a transphobic comment and removing terms that shouldn’t be used anymore. I applaud Brown for making those changes. Others are changes to topical references (some of which were made in previous versions). The real ones will know the Tom Cruise reference that was cut before the 2013 production. I wish many of those topical references had not been changed because The Last Five Years was originally set in the late 1990s…and that’s okay. I get the sense that Brown feels the same way after reading his blog post about the subject.

I love The Last Five Years with much of my heart, and I never would have missed the chance to see it on Broadway. I think it’s worth catching this production before it closes on June 22 if you’ve never seen the show before. However, if you have seen the show before, I would recommend just listening to the 2013 off-Broadway recording with Betsy Wolfe and Adam Kantor. Please let me know if you have a favorite version of the show and know I’d be happy to discuss my opinions on every version in depth.