‘The Last Five Years’ disappoints at the Berkshire Theatre Festival

David Begelman

Theater Critic

Jason Robert Brown’s ‘The Last Five Years’ is a two-character study of a romantic relationship dramatized in song. It features what the playbill calls a “mirrored internal timeline.”

A woman, Cathy, sings seven numbers the first of which coincides with the end of her five-year relationship with a man, Jamie. His numbers, alternating in sequence with hers, begin at the start of his relationship with her.

Cathy’s torch song “Still Hurting” starts the show at her “Year Five,” and ends with the more optimistic “Goodbye Until Tomorrow,” at the outset of the relationship at “Year One.” Jamie in turn starts out with “Shiksa Goddess,” a celebration in “Year One” of his new found love, and winds up with the disconsolate “I Could Never Rescue You” at “Year Five.”

The conceit of timelines going in opposite directions may be a fascinating one to explore, were it not for one problem. As performed, and because of the nature of the individual numbers, separate timelines are not apparent from an audience perspective. Rather, the experience is of two people who are having a difficult time in their relationship, purely and simply. So much for the conceit that is the most original idea of the show.

Cathy Hiatt (Julie Reiber) is an aspiring actress, while Jamie Wellerstein (Paul Anthony Stewart) is a budding author who is not above some name-dropping in the course of reminding us how elite his tastes actually are. At one point in the dialogue, he indicates that a piece by John Updike appeared in the New Yorker (just in case you made the mistake of assuming his literary appetite ran to such lesser fare as Jack London or Mickey Spillane).

Jamie is Jewish, and his initial attraction to Cathy is partially based on her being a blond-haired, blue-eyed “shiksa.” The theme was paralleled in film in the 1972 “The Heartbreak Kid,” in which newly hitched Jewish Lenny (Charles Grodin) falls for a similarly alluring Gentile girl, Kelly (Cybill Shepherd).

Reiber and Stewart are capable vocal artists with unmistakable charisma. It’s the show that they’re in that seems to obscure their talents. Their songs are not particularly memorable, while some of them, like Jamie’s “The Schmuel Song” go off on an ethnic tangent with little import for his relationship with Cathy. She in turn delivers numbers contrived to make her seem a tad on the depressingly repetitious side, with little recourse from tedious iteration of her predicament.

Anders Cato’s direction had his two principals pushing around beds, chairs, and tables in seemingly arbitrary ways in order to individualize the settings for songs.

The backup orchestra for musical numbers appeared on stage throughout the course of the show. It included a quite talented group of performers: Rick Bertone on piano, William Hack on bass, Bing Liu on violin, Jonah Thomas on cello, and Evan C. L. Randall on guitar.

‘The Last Five Years’  runs till July 10 at the Main Stage of the Berkshire Theatre Festival, 83 East Main Street, Stockbridge, MASS. Performances are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Wednesday at 7p.m. Matinees on Thursday and Saturday are at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15-$63 and may be purchased by calling the box office at413-298-5576 or online at www.berkshiretheatre.org.