DENNIS COURTNEY Interviewed for "Last Five Years"

In 'Five Years,' time and love run forward, backward

Kyle Lawson
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 27, 2005 12:00 AM

Gimmicks are good, when they work. Take fooling around with time. Theater loves that one.

Harold Pinter pulled it off in Betrayal. He began his story of a wife's extramarital romance at the end of the affair and followed it back to the start. Audiences never had a problem figuring out what was happening.

Stephen Sondheim didn't have the knack. His musical Merrily We Roll Along tried the same approach. Audiences would have none of it. Despite numerous rewrites, the show never has been successful.

Jason Robert Brown (Parade, Songs for a New World) often is called the heir apparent to Sondheim. Maybe that's why he felt he could succeed where his mentor failed. Better yet, he would go him one better.

In Brown's musical The Last Five Years, which is being staged by Actors Theatre, a couple relive their courtship, marriage and divorce from finish to start - and from start to finish. The woman begins her story at the end, while the man tells his from the beginning. The stories coincide only once - at the wedding.

"To the best of my knowledge, that's never been done before," music director Jonathan Ivie says. "Every song flips your perspective. But I don't think it's hard to follow. The music takes you right where you need to be."

Brown, 35, wrote The Last Five Years in 2001, loosely basing it on the breakup of his marriage. Although the critics raved, the show received a lukewarm welcome in New York. That hasn't kept it from becoming a hit in regional theaters.

In the Actors Theatre production, directed by Dennis Courtney, Stephanie Likes plays Cathy, a struggling actress who falls in love with Jamie, a successful author (played by New York actor Jared Bradshaw). She isn't able to cope with his success; he cheats on her. The relationship ends messily.

Simultaneously moving two ways in time is tough, Courtney says: "It's always easier to go from beginning to end. That's how we move on in our lives. As a director of a straightforward story, you chart the ups and downs, the conflicts, the decisions made and the resolutions. In this one, you have to figure out how to make the story credible to the audience no matter when it's taking place."

The audience also has its task.

"This isn't a mystery," Courtney says. "You know right at the start that the relationship ends badly. You have to sit back and love the journey of these characters and not judge them. It's not important whether he's right or she's right. Relationships fail, no matter how hard people work to make them succeed. It's having the relationship that's the important thing."

For Bradshaw, the trick comes in keeping everything straight in his own head. At the beginning of the show he's on top of the world, while Likes' character is in the pits of depression. That means one minute he's Gene Kelly dancing in the rain and the next (because it then becomes her story), he's yelling at his wife.

"For me, the job is to make the audience like Jamie, and if that's not possible, at least to understand why he does what he does," Bradshaw says. "The audience shouldn't take sides. There are two stories here, and both of them are valid.

Likes thinks the finish-to-start progress of her story line is a good thing, and not just because it makes a good metaphor for a couple who are never at the same place at the same time in their relationship.

"It's a different take," she says. "If you had two people telling you the identical story, it could be boring. The beauty of this show is that you've never seen anything like it before. It makes you pay attention."

Reach the reporter at (602) 444-8947.

Thursday, May 26, 2005
'Five Years' redefines 'love over time'

By Jerry Stein
Post staff reporter

IF YOU GO
Production: "The Last Five Years."

Plot: A musical that looks at a failed marriage from different perspectives in time relayed in a song cycle.

Music and lyrics: Jason Robert Brown.

Theater: Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Eden Park, Mount Adams.

Play dates: Opens tonight through June 19. Dark Mondays.

Tickets: $44-$52.

Information: (513) 421-3888.

The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park closes its season with an unusual musical that tells its story not only from the beginning, but skips around to the middle and end, too.

Cincinnati-born director and Anderson Hills High School graduate Dennis Courtney said of "The Last Five Years," which opens tonight, "It's a story of a relationship between a man and a woman that happens over a five-year period."

Courtney explained that the way Jason Robert Brown's 2001 musical is structured is that Jamie's (D.B. Bonds) story is told from the beginning to the end of the five years.

"For Cathy (Heather Ayers), it's the reverse. She starts the show at the end of the relationship and goes to the beginning. They go in opposite directions telling the story."

Courtney said, for starters, Jamie, a Jewish writer, is getting his first taste of success as an author. Cathy, a Catholic, is struggling to become an actress.

"So, there's all the fussings that happen when a Jew and a Catholic get together - what that does to families. This is one of many, many things."

Another point of conflict between the two is careers.

"What partner is becoming more successful than the other?" Courtney said.

"This show is about all the things that can happen in a five-year relationship. We know when the show opens that the relationship has failed.

"So, in the process of the show we just see the ups and downs of this relationship."

The characters actually meet real time in the middle of the two-character musical.

"When they come to the center of the show, which is the wedding, they are at the same place at the same time," Courtney said.

"There are other places where they are on the stage at the same time."

At these instances, Courtney said, "One of them is just there as a memory for the other person to remember."

"The Last Five Years" is a song cycle, the story told through a series of songs except for a couple of bridge scenes that use dialogue. It is performed in one act over 85 minutes.

The time manipulation of "The Last Five Years" is reminiscent of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Merrily We Roll Along," presented this season at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

This musical tells of three friends in show biz from end to beginning. The book is not successful because the reverse order robs the musical of dramatic interest.

"I agree it was not successful," Courtney said. "I think there are a couple of reasons 'Merrily' covered a larger span of time.

"And the actors involved had to do a 40-year stretch. That's hard for an audience to really wrap their heads around if the actors don't change that much.

" 'The Last Five Years' is only a five-year stretch."

During rehearsals, Courtney said his two actors and he tried going in one direction - that is, starting in the present for both characters - as an experiment.

"It did not play well.

"We tried playing it in reverse (beginning in the past and working toward the present) for both characters and it did not play well."

Courtney said the actors and he realized that the show needs this balance between the past and present coming together into the present.

"For instance, when the show opens, Cathy is obviously devastated that the relationship is over," Courtney said. "So, she comes into the show all-knowing.

"Then, the very next song, Jamie is at the beginning. So you go from this balance of pain and sorrow to exhilaration. You get those big peaks and valleys. I call it a roller coaster ride."

Even though "The Last Five Years" doesn't promise a fairy tale ending, as is obvious from our knowing the end at the beginning, Courtney believes the musical offers a valuable perspective.

"What is important for me is that the audience understand the having of a relationship that's important. It's the having it in the day-to-day, in-the-moment and making the best of each of those moments.

"Not blaming. And not saying if a relationship doesn't go past five years, it was a failure.

"We tend to think that if you get together with somebody and if it doesn't last forever, it's a failure.

"I feel like having the relationship is the success regardless of the outcome. It's the everyday journey - experiencing the highs and lows that are important."