“The Last Five Years”
Arts Council of Greater Baton Rogue
Baton Rouge
October 10-12
When you’re dating someone new, the world is full of possibilities. You don’t know about the way they fart in their sleep or talk too much at parties. You think their dreams are possible. Towards the end of a relationship, the traits that endeared them to you can twist into the traits that annoy you the most. If only you knew at the beginning, maybe you wouldn’t have fallen in love at all. In “The Last Five Years,” a musical which premiered in 2001 by Jason Robert Brown, we see both sides at the same time.
For this weekend at the blackbox in the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, “The Last Five Years,” has come to Baton Rouge starring Kristina Cawthon as Cathy Hiatt and Landon Corbin as Jamie Wellerstein. The story centers a couple: Cathy (a struggling actress) and Jamie (a successful novelist) over the course of their five- year relationship. The musical, directed by Calla Harper and Spenser Hunt, shows Cathy’s perspective from the end of the relationship backwards to the beginning and Jamie’s perspective in chronological order. The two timelines intersect in the middle during the wedding song. The show is scored by a live orchestra: Lee Hartman on piano, Pat Lavergne on bass, Susannah Knoll and Maria Ortega on cellos, Alice Muller on violin and Dustin Dawson on guitar.
Kristina Cawthon shines in this show. She plays the part of Cathy with emotional depth. When she sings, “Jamie is probably feeling just fine//and I’m still hurting,” in the opening “Still Hurting,” we believe her. When, just minutes later, she’s pulled into a scene with Jamie set at the beginning of the relationship when he’s idealizing her, her eyes shine like a girl in love.
Almost a year ago, Cawthon played the female lead, Amalia Balash, in the Sullivan Theater’s production of “She Loves Me.” Coming out of that show, it was apparent that she was a talented singer, but in “The Last Five Years,” she seems to really connect and embody the material to a whole other level. Through Cawthon, Cathy’s longing for her acting career is the audience’s longing, her anger at Jamie is the audience’s anger, and her ballads are going to be echoing in the audience’s ears for the foreseeable future.
It’s the kind of story that only someone who has loved and lost could write, and it is. This musical is based on the real-life failed marriage of writer/composer Jason Robert Brown. The storyline so closely resembles the relationship that his ex-wife, Theresa O'Neill sued Brown on the grounds that it violated the non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements of their divorce. Brown eventually countersued and made some changes to one song to reduce the similarity. That being said, the book is much more sympathetic to Cathy. The show opens with her weeping after Jamie calls their relationship quits, setting the tone before we even get to see them in love. The moments of tension between her and Jamie are mostly either no one’s fault or his fault, and Jamie is the one who ultimately breaks trust in their relationship.
In Cawthon and Corbin’s portrayal, it works. Despite it all, “The Last Five Years” is a show that makes you want to root for love even if it doesn’t last. Given the format, we know where the story ends, but we fall in love with the couple anyway. It’s rare that something new playing on Broadway this year is also playing in Baton Rouge right now. This is a dazzling debut for Strike Theatre Co., and I can’t wait to see what they bring to the city next. I trust that this, in the words of Cathy, is just "goodbye until the next time you call//and I will be waiting.”
