When a relationship founders, two different stories are likely to emerge, one from each of the no-longer involved parties.
Jason Robert Brown built his musical “The Last Five Years’’ around that ineluctable reality, chronicling the collapse of a marriage from the divergent, wounded perspectives of husband Jamie, a novelist on the rise, and wife Cathy, an actress whose career has stalled.
The twist Brown added to this dual prism is that Jamie’s account proceeds in straightforward linear fashion while Cathy’s version moves backward in time, from the end of their relationship to the beginning. So they are literally moving in opposite directions — and that seems to say it all about this doomed duo.
Advertisement
Adam Kantor and Betsy Wolfe, who starred in the recent off-Broadway revival of Brown’s musical, overcame significant lighting glitches at the Wimberly Theatre on Saturday night as they teamed up for an alternately poignant and funny concert version of “The Last Five Years.’’
For all the emotion that pours out of them, Jamie and Cathy remain somewhat indistinct as characters, not particularized enough. I wonder if there’s a Rorschach-blot aspect to the cult status “The Last Five Years’’ enjoys among young musical theater enthusiasts: It allows audiences to fill in the blanks of this story of love found and lost, or perhaps to see similarities to their own stories.
Still, Brown is a capable and sometimes trenchant lyricist. He has crafted songs that fall pleasantly on the ear and often linger in the memory. They range from plaintive ballads (“A Part of That,’’ “Nobody Needs to Know’’) to bouncy comic numbers like “A Summer in Ohio,’’ in which Wolfe showcased her vocal range while nailing the humor, pathos, and desperation of an actress trapped in the purgatory of summer stock, going so far as to insert an F-bomb in the middle of “Cincinnati.’’
Advertisement
Kantor was equally funny in “A Miracle Would Happen,’’ contorting his voice and features as Jamie battled the carnal temptations that apparently come with literary celebrity. He was eventually joined by Wolfe’s amusing parody of simpering domesticity, “When You Come Home to Me,’’ performed with the glassy eyes of a Stepford wife.
As with the stage musical, the concert version of “The Last Five Years’’ unfolded primarily as a series of alternating solos, with a few exceptions, such as the spellbinding duet “The Next Ten Minutes,’’ during which Jamie and Cathy embark on what they believe will be the rest of their lives together.
The first two songs set the template for the evening. Wolfe began “Still Hurting’’ in a mood of quiet desolation, then shifted emotional registers to communicate Cathy’s pain and anger at the dissolution of her marriage to Jamie. The impression left was of one who had experienced a mortal blow. Then the time shifted to five years earlier, when Cathy and Jamie have begun dating. Kantor stepped to the mike and launched into the wisecracking “Shiksa Goddess’’ – in which Jamie slyly confided to the audience that “I’m breaking my mother’s heart’’ and described a romantic history marked by “Shabbos dinners on Friday nights / With every Shapiro in Washington Heights’’ — before finally shifting into a more serious and passionate vein: “You, you are the story I should write / I have to write.’’
Even though it’s heartfelt, that line suggests the fatal power imbalance between the two. Jamie is cocksure, on the move, and more than a bit ruthless in his ambition (“I will not lose because you can’t win,’’ he tells Cathy in “If I Didn’t Believe in You’’), while Cathy’s hold on her identity always seems wobbly.
Advertisement
Wolfe beautifully captured that quality in “A Part of That.’’ Cathy acknowledges she “tend(s) to follow in his stride / Instead of side by side’’ but expresses pride in Jamie’s copious talents, repeatedly declaring “I’m a part of that,’’ until a shadow of doubt crossed Wolfe’s face when she sang “Aren’t I?’’
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.