High 'Five'
It's great to have the intimate relationship musical "The Last Five Years" back in the Chicago area again. It had its world premiere at Skokie's Northlight Theatre in 2001 before heading to New York the next year. Since then the show has popped up in and around Chicago in nearly half a dozen productions.
Steel Beam Theatre's current rendition shows why it's so popular. Not only does it overflow with emotional contemporary music and juicy acting moments, it's so economical in terms of cast size (just two) that it can be done on the cheap.
If you don't know the concept behind "The Last Five Years," the first few songs might be baffling. Instead of telling the same old boy and girl fall in and out of love story, composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown ("Parade," "Songs for a New World") mixes things up.
Brown alternates solo songs between two New York lovers so each can give his or her own take on the relationship. There's Jewish wunderkind novelist Jamie Wellerstein and aspiring actress Catherine Hiatt.
But Brown's unconventional structure has Catherine's perspective told in reverse starting at the breakup, while Jamie's side charges on chronologically at the smitten start (the only scene where they physically join together in time is in the middle at their wedding).
With the backward and forward songs, Brown shows a continuum of joy and pain, which brings an extra contemplative dimension to the musical and relationships in general.
We also get to piece together the conflicting cracks in the relationship, which largely has to do with Jamie's professional and heady success, which isn't shared in Catherine's struggle to find acting work (and her dismay at the less-than-glamorous pickings she gets in summer stock is in the hilarious song "A Summer in Ohio").
Steel Beam Theatre's take on "The Last Five Years" capably delivers the goods, though it's not quite ripened to perfection yet.
Director R. Aaron Thomann offers up a non-traditionally cast production, with African-American actress Sharriese Hamilton playing Catherine. In our day and age it should be a non-issue, though it does push the Yiddish expression in Jamie's song "Shiksa Goddess" beyond the stereotypical image of a blond, blue-eyed WASP woman.
Hamilton is great at belting out the songs, and she is expert at delivering the comedy number "Climbing Uphill," which details her every single thought during a horrible audition. What's missing from Hamilton's performance is a stronger emotional connection to her character, particularly at the beginning when she's moping and angrily lashing out at Jamie.
Jonathan Wagner's Jamie is much more in the moment and he is particularly brilliant at showing off exuberance and comedy (particularly in "The Schmuel Song" about a Jewish tailor with a magical clock).
What's wonderful about Steel Beam's intimate production is you can hear such a gorgeous score sung so well with no disembodying amplification. True, the fine onstage orchestra under music director/pianist Jeremy Ramey might overpower the singers now and then, but it's mainly a good balance.
With such good performances, you wish Thomann's set design of five silky sheets (no doubt for each year of the relationship) didn't look so tatty. Also, not all of Cynthia Hall's costumes flatter the fine performers.
But with such an emotional show like "The Last Five Years," what matters most are the performers being able to get the story across and in this respect Steel Beam's production definitely succeeds. It's also great that Steel Beam took a chance on such a new work, instead of producing the umpteenth revival of that other (and more dated) two-character relationship musical from 1966, "I Do! I Do!"
"The Last Five Years"
3 stars
Location: Steel Beam Theatre, 111 W. Main St., St. Charles
Times: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through May 18
Running time: 85 minutes without intermission
Parking: Street parking
Tickets: $25; $23 seniors/students
Box office: (630) 587-8521
Rating: Some profanity; issues of infidelity