If you judge a show’s popularity by how many productions it’s had, then “The Last Five Years” is a “Wicked”-size blockbuster.
In the 11 years since its brief off-Broadway run, this intimate musical by Jason Robert Brown (“13,” “Parade”) has been mounted 500 times in the US and 3,000 times abroad. It also launched the careers of its original stars, Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott.
No wonder small theaters and schools love “The Last Five Years”: There are only two characters and minimal sets, and it offers romance with a twist, recounting a straightforward relationship by means of a jumbled timeline.
As they tell their story, Jamie (Adam Kantor) follows a chronological order, from crush all the way to separation, while Catherine (Betsy Wolfe, late of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”) retraces their romance backward.
If this sounds confusing, it is: Unless you’re familiar with the concept, this Second Stage revival — directed by Brown himself — may leave you a little baffled as to what’s going on, at least at first.
The chamber musical has acquired a large fan base over the past decade, but even skeptics will relish the luminous Wolfe’s performance as a sweet aspiring actress. She easily segues from heartbreak — Catherine’s first line is, “Jamie is over and Jamie is gone” — to capturing the goofy charm of a young woman falling in love. Coincidentally, Wolfe was one of Scott’s backup singers in “Everyday Rapture” a few years back. She may follow her predecessor to the top.
Jamie’s happy songs are at the beginning, as when he exults about falling for a “shiksa goddess”: “I’m your Hebrew slave, at your service!” But the character is a bit of a jerk, and Kantor struggles to make us overlook that. It’s hard to feel for a guy who, after flirting with a woman at a party, says, “I shouldn’t care what she thinks/Since I can’t f – – k her anyway!”
Brown’s production looks handsome — nice design seems to be a Second Stage trademark. Derek McLane’s set is so spare that it can transform in a number of locales with just a few well-chosen props: a bed, the end of a dock to suggest a lake house, a Central Park boat.
“The Last Five Years” certainly is clever — sometimes to a fault. The show essentially is a series of solos, and the only time the characters actually cross paths and sing to each other is midway through, when Jamie proposes in the boat. Otherwise each actor has to emote to the empty space where the other should be, robbing the show of much- needed energy.
In musicals, as in life, one is the loneliest number.