"The Last 5 Years": Romance, Hard Times

◊◊◊ 1/2 out of five.  90 minutes, no intermission.  Adult language and situations.

Jason Robert Brown is among the "new musical" composers that I love so much.  Brown and such colleagues as Michael John LaChiusa (Hello, Again, The Wild Party) and Adam Guettel (Light in the Piazza, Floyd Collins) are really pushing the American musical is a number of exciting directions.  It is somewhat of a surprise to me, given that I love Brown's Tony-winning score for Parade, that I have somehow completely missed The Last 5 Years, his musical about a relationship and failed marriage now onstage at Vagabond Players in Fells Point.  I have managed to miss it off-Broadway, at Everyman Theatre; heck, I don't even own the CD - a glaring hole in my library!  So I come to this production with a relatively blank slate and no real predispositions.  I have found it to be a bit perplexing.  I liked the story, but really wanted to like it more.  I liked the score, but wanted to like it more.  I liked the production, but really wanted to love it. 

Let me start right off by saying any misgivings I have about the show have nothing whatsoever to do with its performers.  In fact, I'd venture a guess that when all is said and done in 2007, their performances will be right up their come recognition time.  And these young actors are among the very best local theatre has going for it.  With them, the future looks bright.  Julia Lancione, fresh from a national tour of Cats, plays Cathy, a young aspiring actress.  And Randy Dunkle, most recently of AIDA and Brown's Songs for a New World at Cockpit-in-Court, plays Jamie, a young aspiring writer.  It is easy to see why these actors were cast.  They are young, vibrant and unbelievably talented. 

Miss Lancione has a thrilling voice, crystal clear and just lovely to listen to.  More importantly, she is a singing actress, giving every one of her songs the attention to detail normally reserved by actors doing soliloquies from Hamlet.  Her Cathy is a fully rounded emotional character – the complete range, from euphoria to deep depression.  How does she convey this?  With every fiber of her being, particularly her eyes, which are deep pools of light revealing every nuance of feeling.  And her smile (and conversely, her frown) lights up the room.  In short, she has created a character that we are interested in and root for, even when we are privy to the not so nice aspects of Cathy.  Miss Lancione is particularly gripping in her opening number ("Still Hurting") and her closing number (Goodbye Until Tomorrow), providing a tight, satisfying bookend to the evening.  And the sequence that has her balancing her personal life with endless auditions and performing ring so true ("When You Come Home to Me"), it is not hard to imagine that more than just a little Julia is informing Cathy.   

Count me among Randy Dunkle's biggest fans.  This young actor continually pushes his career in challenging directions – Sunday in the Park with George and AIDA, among others, are on his resume.  But with The Last 5 Years, Mr. Dunkle finally has achieved the "whole picture."  This is a performance of nuance, natural and real.  The raw honesty he brings to Jamie is so satisfying for me to see, both as a critic and a man.  Rarely are men portrayed so realistically, warts and all, and that Mr. Dunkle has risen to the challenge of representing us all through the trials and tribulations of dating, marriage and beyond is exhilarating to witness.  He literally throws his whole body into this performance.  Every movement a telling detail, every gesture full of meaning, he is masculinity and sensitivity personified.  Like his co-star, Mr. Dunkle shows the full range of emotions with remarkable skill – his chest voice booms, and his falsetto is clear and pleasing to the ear.  He energizes the show from the get-go in "Shiksa Goddess", and is riotously funny in "The Schmuel Song", where he gets to show of his ability to do multiple characters simultaneously, and is both maddening and heartbreaking as his marriage unravels at the hands of an affair in "Nobody Needs to Know" and "I Could Never Rescue You." 

What is most remarkable about this pair of performances is the level of chemistry these two have with each other.  The conceit of the show dictates that they sing almost always directly to the audience, who substitutes often for the other character, or that they sing to each other, but while the non-singer is completely faced away from the audience.  Only once to they actually sing together and to each other – the center scene, "The Next Ten Minutes", and even then it isn't completely TO each other.  Still, you can't help but feel the electricity between them when they meet and start dating, and you can't help but feel the chill when their relationship fails. 

This conceit – each character does a solo scene at a different point in the relationship, alternating, and from opposite starting points – certainly makes it interesting.  Brown asks a lot of his audience, as we watch Cathy start at the end, deep in despair, and Jamie starting at the beginning, with the heady all consuming joy of first love.  But it is also its down fall, because sometimes you forget where you are in the story.  I am certain, that with some study and repeat listening to the score, all the clues are there.  In fact, some repeated phrases jump out at you even at one listening.  But still, eventually everything begins to blend together – the ballads all sound the same, and the up tempo story songs are clever lyrically, causing you to pay complete attention to the words, and not the music along with it.  The result is somewhat of a musical blur – you pay close attention, get it and then switch gears over and over, with no time to catch your breath. 

Of course, not all of the issue of understandability can be blamed on the book or score.  The director has a lot to do with how the audience perceives and embraces a piece.  Bill Kamberger, a respected director of musicals locally, has brought this one in on an uneven keel, which seriously undermines the overall success of the piece.  The opening and closing bits – a videotape of Jamie and Cathy dancing at their wedding – is a touching way to start and stop and sets up the themes of the evening very well.  There are other touches a the beginning – Cathy looks at a dried up bunch of flowers with regret as we see Jamie "hand" them to her fresh, hope and expectation in his eyes.  Things like this aren't obvious, but are gentle reminders of the connection we need to understand, even as we see it unraveling from both ends at once.  I also suspect that the costumes probably parallel the scenes; Jamie's 1994 costume in scene 4 is probably the same one as in scene 12 or at least closely.  More touches like those would make it much easier to get on first viewing, rather than frustrating to the point that you start not to care that you don't get it.  (Thank God the actors make you care in spite of it!)  Oddly, the time period being flashed on the screen before each scene doesn't really help.  It breaks concentration and only keeps reminding us that we are going all over the map here.  Finally, Kamberger has done little or nothing to bring into focus any subtext or back story – any such details are clearly coming from the actors, who are working their asses off making us believe they are a couple.  You can tell this because these touches are inconsistent – when they are there, they are excellent; one can only imagine how full this show will be later in the run.

Like the rest of the production, Tony Colavito's set design is a mixed bag, as well.  Interestingly, everything on the set is painted black, allowing the cast and select props to bring color to the piece and focuses us on them.  The bed, which dominates the floor, is used for everything from a bed to a car to a Central Park row boat.  This is theatrically interesting and practical.  But then you have the upstage center space where the three piece band (Aaron Broderick, Alyson Shirk, Alex Zielinski) sits, framed by a flower covered arch.  It doesn't fit the setting, and only serves to distract.  The band is not the show.  They are, however, excellent.  They play the complicated score well, and help the actors punctuate moments perfectly.  And they do their level best not to pull focus, but the flowers make it an uphill battle. 

Only Charles Danforth's lighting perfectly sets the stage AND aids in understanding.  He creates mood with light and the absence of light here.  The effect is subtle and comforting.  The lighting is particularly effective during Cathy's audition sequence, where she goes back and forth between audition and reality, often mid-sentence. 

Baltimore, celebrate the modern musical by seeing this wonderful, if imperfect, piece of musical theatre.  If you are tired of the same old thing, then Vagabond Players needs to be on your calendar.  But even if you like your musicals traditional, don't count this one out.  You'll be missing two truly magical, magnificent performances.

 

PHOTO by Tom Lauer, courtesy of Vagabond Players.  Left, Randy Dunkle; right, Julia Lancione.