The Last Five Years is an intimate, two-person musical that tells the compelling story of Jamie, a nice Jewish boy, and Kathleen, a good Irish Catholic girl, who fall in love, get married, and fall apart over the course of five years. Jamie is an emerging novelist enjoying his first taste of success, while Kathleen is a struggling actress having trouble hitting it big, making their musical duet by turns wildly funny and crushingly sad.

Brown has employed an unusual temporal shift in the piece, with Kathleen starting at the end of the marriage and working her way back, while Jamie begins on their first date and works his way forward. Only once do Jamie and Kathleen sing together, at their wedding in the middle of the play. This underscores cause and effect, as two people whose powerful love for one another cannot overcome their cultural differences and divergent dreams.

Musically, Brown's score navigates the minefields of love and marriage through soulful, soaring music and lyrics that evoke contemporary pop songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, combined with the theatrical styles of Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein. Traditional Jewish and Irish musical themes are also played against the sounds, pace and complexity of contemporary life in New York City.

The show opened to rave reviews and after it's Chicago run, hopefully will make its way to Broadway to play the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center in the fall. It's scheduled to run for 45 performances, from May 23 to June 24, 2001. [UPDATE: It has since been extended one more week to July 1] Ticket information is available at the Northlight website (opens new window). Here are some review excerpts:

"YOU BETTER GO SEE IT. I will not leave you alone until you do.... Exhilaration, so intense that it brings tears of joy, is at hand in the premiere of 'The Last Five Years' at Northlight Theatre.... Bursting with newfound talent, [it] is a triumph for everyone involved."
--Richard Christiansen, The Chicago Tribune

"IT ONLY TAKES TWO SONGS...TO MAKE IT CLEAR that [this] is a very special piece of work. It's instantly clear, as well, that this poignant, richly dramatic and piercingly honest show is destined to be a hit.... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED"
--Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

Norbert Leo Butz was in the original cast of Rent as a swing and later appeared as Roger in 1998 on Broadway. Butz has also toured as the Emcee in Cabaret (for which he received a Helen Hayes Award, Toronto's Dora Award, and Joseph Jefferson Award and L.A. Ovation Award nominations) and was featured in the recent Off-Broadway staging of Saved. He's also been seen on television in the NBC series "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

Lauren Kennedy played Petra Wolff in Chad Beguelin and Matthew Sklar's The Rhythm Club at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA. The production was to play on Broadway this season until financial problems caused them to indefinitely delay the opening. She has also performed in Broadway's Side Show and Sunset Boulevard in New York and Los Angeles and tour.

Scene One - Still Hurting (Kathleen)
Scene Two - I Could Be In Love with Someone Like You (Jamie)
Scene Three - See I'm Smiling (Kathleen)
Scene Four - Moving Too Fast (Jamie)
Scene Five - A Part of That (Kathleen)
Scene Six - The Schmuel Song (Jamie)
Scene Seven - A Summer in Ohio (Kathleen)
Scene Eight - The Next Ten Minutes (Jamie & Kathleen)
Scene Nine - A Miracle Would Happen (Jamie)
Scene Ten - Audition Sequence (Kathleen)
Scene Eleven - If I Didn't Believe In You (Jamie)
Scene Twelve - I Can Do Better Than That (Kathleen)
Scene Thirteen - Nobody Needs to Know (Jamie)
Scene Fourteen - Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You (Kathleen & Jamie)