When Edward Albee arranged for a goat to be the love interest in his play The Goat: Or, Who is Sylvia?, he implicitly acknowledged the difficulty of writing a love story in the 21st century. After Aeschylus and Sappho, Shakespeare and John Donne, D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, who needs another simple boy-meets-girl exercise?
Well, apparently Jason Robert Brown doesn't agree. This hugely talented composer and lyricist (1999 Tony award for his score for Parade, recordings by RCA Victor, comparisons to Stephen Sondheim) offers some gorgeous songs in The Last Five Years, but the story he tells is so overly familiar, it's hard to pay it much attention. The Last Five Years tells the tale of Cathy and Jamie, an aspiring actress and a successful novelist, who meet, marry, break up, end of narrative. Brown's one dramatic gambit is that he tells Cathy's story from end to beginning, while telling Jamie's segments from start to finish. Running a show back to front isn't new — Pinter did it in Betrayal over 20 years ago — but with one story running forwards and one running backwards, Brown's play becomes far more confusing than illuminating. Are they married yet? Did she get a callback after her audition? Who's he sleeping with? Has the breakup started? The problem is that, even when you figure out where you are, you turn out to be in the midst of a cliché. If all there were to The Last Five Years was its story, it wouldn't be worth our time.
But there's more. Brown's music is often glorious. Complicated, jazzy and sure-handed, it tests the resources of his singers and of the live five-person band (including piano, violin, cello, bass and guitar) that plays expertly throughout the 90-minute show. His lyrics are intelligent, too: sharp, contemporary and often unrhymed ("No, that one's Jerry Seinfeld./That one's John Lennon there./No, the Dakota/The San Remo is up a few blocks./Have you been inside the Museum?/We should go./Meet the dinosaurs."). There's humor ("Don't look at my shoes /I hate these fucking shoes") and occasional pathos ("If I didn't believe in you,/We'd never have gotten this far./If I didn't believe in you/And all of the ten thousand women you are.").
And not least there are the performances of Meegan Midkiff and Tommy Foster, easily among the best I've seen in months. Both have terrific voices and notable acting chops. As Cathy, Midkiff comes across as sympathetically needy, a woman who's going nowhere in her career as a thespian and who depends on her marriage as her main source of satisfaction.
Foster as Jamie is not quite as likable. He's a bit callous, somewhat selfish, and finds no torment so painful as the agony of turning down propositions from other women once he's married. Still, Foster plays Jamie as truly excited about Cathy when their relationship begins, and we can't help but wish them well — along with the 40,000 other couples they resemble. If any performers could lift The Last Five Years out of the morass of triteness, it would be Midkiff and Foster. But they can't, and we have to acknowledge their formidable talents while feeling bored by their humdrum predicament.
Everything else about the production is top-notch. Brett Smock's direction is kinetic, and John Burchett's abstract two-level set gives the performers lots of room in which to celebrate and complain. Anastasia Williams and Crystal Squires created the casual costumes, and Burchett also designed the lighting, which could hardly be better. One further point ought to be made: Sometimes the musical accompaniment to the songs — played by Carl Haan, Eric Nordstrom, Betsy Goode, Alan Satkowski and Mark Neuenschwander — is the most beautiful thing in the house, far more moving than the melody or lyrics it supports. If you attend the show, you'll see what I mean. And you might get the idea that Gorilla Theatre could be the perfect venue for a satisfying evening of Beethoven quartets. Chamber musicians: check it out.
But back to The Last Five Years. If you're curious about the latest directions in musical theater, you'll no doubt find the show worthwhile in spite of its tired subject matter. Brown is an important composer — his first musical Songs for a New World has been seen in more than 200 productions worldwide — and Gorilla Theatre is to be thanked for bringing his work to the Tampa Bay area. But if you're interested in theater as a place where emotions and intellect are challenged, this isn't for you. The love story it tells is no more inventive or searching than anything on TV. There are a million stories in the Naked City, and they all sound like this one.
Moral: You can talk front to back or back to front as you choose.
But it wouldn't hurt to have something to say.
Williams Fans Take Note: If you're a Tennessee Williams fan, you may want to take the drive to Sarasota to see Five By Tenn at the FSU/Asolo Conservatory. The five one-acts included in the show are, in three cases, not very illuminating, but 27 Wagons Full of Cotton is a minor masterpiece (and beautifully acted), and These Are The Stairs You Got To Watch has a mythic quality, as if Williams were describing the secret mechanism running the world. True, the acting in most of the short plays is spotty; on the other hand, it may be another 10 years before anyone in the area produces these scripts. Five By Tenn runs Tuesdays-Sundays through March 19. For tickets call 941-351-8000.
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2006.