The Last Five Years

‘The Last Five Years’ by the Drama Desk and Tony Award winning Jason Robert Brown is presented by The Brainbox Project. Playing DownStairs at the Maj in Perth, nightly at 7.30 until Saturday, 29^th May.

         It is New York and Cathy (Sharon Wisniewski) is still hurting at the loss of her husband, Jamie (Brendan Hanson). She starts to retrospectively recall the last five years. Then we go back five years and meet Jamie, a good Jewish boy, who having looked around at the limited choice of girls of a like-faith, finds beautiful Cathy his ‘Shiksa (a derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman) Goddess’. His story advances through the same period, until the two personal journeys meet at the pinnacle of their relationship. Their tales are told only through song, with no spoken dialogue.

It is said that sadly, one of this intimate musical’s main and best loved pieces of music, had to be removed at the request of the writer’s wife’s lawyers, because she thought that it belittled her. However the eighteen or so remaining songs still leave us with an excitement that we have experienced the coming of the next Stephen Sondheim. Every piece of music had a different style or genres, including such diversity as jazz, a klezmer (a traditional Jewish tune reminiscent of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’), rock, and a hint of Celtic folk.

The meaningful lyrics are enunciated skilfully, even in the two songs that called for really powerful delivery and passion, the two singers were not strained and the words flowed beautifully.

The singing talent of Brendan Hanson is well admired by his contemporaries, and he, like Sharon, has good solid acting ability with which to present the full emotions of the lyrics.

Although the couple sang for 90 stunning minutes, non-stop (I didn’t even see a sip of water), their performances were powerful throughout. Sensitively directed by Belinda Dunbar, there was plenty of fun and passion in the performances.

Jacinta Radbourne’s teching was excellent, and sympathetically operated.

Featuring a four piece band – cello (Jennifer Tingley), violin (John Pokorny), guitar (Quentin Edmonds) and on piano the Musical Director himself, Tim Cunniffe. Tim knows the acoustics of the venue well, and whilst giving a superb backing to the performers, kept the balance and the volume of the four instruments at just the right level.

A fascinating and uplifting story, related with magnificent dialogue and presented by amazing performers.