Theatre in Review: The Last Five Years (Second Stage)The Last Five Years has always been a heartbreaker, for more than one reason. Jason Robert Brown's scenes-from-a-marriage chamber piece is so packed with powerful emotions that the foreshortened nature of its original Off Broadway run, 11 years ago, felt like a miscarriage of justice. Thanks to the original cast CD and many regional productions, the show has never really gone away, and now, in a stunning new production staged by Brown himself, the full beauty of this small, but devastating, piece is there for all to see. More a song cycle than a full-fledged musical, The Last Five Years charts the relationship -- from first glance to final kiss -- of Jamie and Cathy. At 23, he is already a published novelist, openly reveling in his status as American literature's Next Big Thing. She is a nice girl from Long Island who has fled to Manhattan to make it as an actress, a dream that recedes as Jamie's celebrity grows. Told in straightforward fashion, their story might seem downbeat, even banal. But Brown twists his narrative into a kind of Mobius strip in which time moves forward and backward at the same time. In a musical consisting almost entirely of solos -- the one exception is a wedding-day duet -- Jamie's side of the story tracks their affair's forward progression while Cathy's scenes start at the bitter end and look back. It's a fascinating strategy that informs the numbers coming and going; even the most hopeful melody is darkened by our awareness of what's coming, and the more sorrowful scenes are deepened by our knowledge of what has come before. And what numbers! "Shiksa Goddess" wittily weds salsa and klezmer into one thoroughly impudent melodic line as the Jewish Jamie sees in Cathy the ultimate forbidden fruit. ("I'm breaking my mother's heart/The longer I stand looking at you/The more I hear it/Splinter and crack/From 90 miles away.") "If I Didn't Believe in You" is the cri de coeur of a man watching helplessly as his marriage comes apart. And the quietly savage "Nobody Needs to Know" finds the adulterous Jamie sifting through the ashes of his marriage. Cathy gets "A Summer in Ohio," a wickedly funny portrait of the dubious joys of summer stock ("No, it's not Nirvana/But it's on the way/I play 'Anita' at the matinee"); the angry, defiant "Climbing Uphill" ("I will not be the girl stuck/At home in the 'burbs/With the baby, the dog/And the garden of herbs"); and "I'm a Part of That," in which Cathy assures herself that she is integral to Jamie's success, then adds, with a sudden terrible stab of doubt, "Aren't I?" That last bit of business is delivered with heart-rending expertise by Betsy Wolfe, who is ideally partnered here with Adam Kantor. It would take a lot of nerve to say they improve on Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott, who created the roles in New York, but at the very least they offer new insights into the characters. Butz and Scott offered the bruising comedy of mismatched egos -- Jamie's naturally self-aggrandizing nature pitted against Cathy's default passive-aggression. Wolfe and Kantor seem to inhabit the characters more naturally, illuminating the dark corners where their fears and vulnerabilities are hidden. That they love each other is never in doubt; their duet, "The Next Ten Minutes," is the heart and soul of the show, summoning as it does their deepest hopes for a lifetime of happiness together. Kantor also captures the sheer delirium of "Moving Too Fast," which brings us up to speed on Jamie's early success, and he also gives a blessedly lucid reading of the show's most difficult number, "The Schmuel Song," in which Jamie invents a Jewish folk tale designed to spark Cathy's career ambitions. Wolfe finds bitter hilarity in the scenes depicting Cathy's largely futile auditions, contrasting the generic, wanly delivered show tune she uses for all occasions with her acid inner thoughts. Curled up in a car seat, sipping on a Big Gulp, and all but glowing with infatuation, she turns "I Can Do Better Than That" -- a comic account of youthful disappointments -- into Exhibit A in the case for why Jamie loved her in the first place. The meticulous, finely detailed work of the two actors -- in both acting and singing -- strongly suggests that Brown is as skilled a director as he is a writer-composer. Which is saying a lot. Brown draws on a variety of musical influences, all of them blended together to create a distinctive sound. The score, beautifully orchestrated for piano, two cellos, violin, bass, and guitars, offers any number of striking melodies, many of them infused with a strong undertone of sadness and loss; additional hearings confirm how carefully Brown weaves certain musical and lyric ideas throughout the work, often drastically changing their meanings in different contexts. Brown has overseen a striking and beautifully moody production design. Derek McLane's set places the musicians on various levels of the upstage wall; for some scenes, a set of apartment house windows fly in, while in others, a trio of windows provides frames for location-setting projections by Jeff Sugg. Jeff Croiter's lighting ranges from color accents built into the windows to carefully wrought color washes and geometric floor patterns. Jon Weston's sound design maintains a blessedly natural sound. Emily Rebholz's costumes reflect deep knowledge of the characters. Some have complained that The Last Five Years doesn't fully explain the problems that undermine Jamie and Cathy's affair; to them I can only reply that the show works through inference, and if you are willing to listen closely enough, the information is there. What I find almost impossible to understand is those who have criticized the score. Brown's work would be remarkable at any time, but in the current climate for musical theatre, when borrowed scores and secondhand stories are, all too often, the best anyone can do, the sheer intelligence and feeling of his work are second to none. Unfairly dismissed the first time around, The Last Five Years is looking more and more like a classic.--David Barbour 
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