Imagine one couple’s relationship from first date to divorce in an emotional, musical, hairpin-turn performance.
Jason Robert Brown’s, “The Last Five Years,” explores two different arcs of the five-year relationship between Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hyatt, a struggling actress.
Whidbey Island Center for the Arts presents the play through its Local Artists Series at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 12, with Katie Woodzick as Cathy and Jason Dittmer as Jamie.
Woodzick, who chose the piece, said Brown is one of her favorite composers.
“I fell in love with the music,” Woodzick said of the play.
“It is 95 percent songs with very little spoken words, and seemed like a great challenge; something unique,” she said.
Musical theater actors are challenged to perform Brown’s songs because of his complex composing style, which requires singers to have large vocal ranges and the ability to tackle unexpected changes in music, much like the work of Stephen Sondheim.
Woodzick said the show is designed for singers who belt, and that Dittmer has risen to the challenge.
“It’s been great to hear him belt it out, because the songs suit his voice really well,” she said.
The show uses a form of storytelling in which Cathy’s story is told in reverse chronological order — beginning the show at the end of the marriage — while Jamie tells his side of the story from start to finish, beginning just after he meets his future wife. The characters never directly interact, except when they sing a song at their wedding together in the middle of the play, when their timelines intersect.
“The Last Five Years” was inspired by Brown’s real-life failed marriage, and consists of 14 songs, including “Still Hurting,” (Woodzick’s favorite), “Moving Too Fast” and “Nobody Needs to Know.”
The play debuted at the Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Ill. in 2001, and opened in New York City at the Minetta Lane Theatre in 2002. The New York production won the 2002 Drama Desk Award for outstanding music and lyrics. It also received the Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical.
Brown’s first major work for off-Broadway was “Songs For a New World,” which has become a popular show at high schools and community theaters across the United States, Britain and Australia since it opened in 1995.
Brown went on to write the music for the Broadway production of “Parade,” directed by Hal Prince, for which he won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Original Musical Score.
Woodzick said she thinks an island audience will appreciate Brown’s music and the play because of its unexpected structure that lends something to the emotional life of the piece.
“It’s interesting because it demands more from the audience,” Woodzick noted.
“And you get two stories from both points of view. It’s a really awesome piece, and I think everybody will like it.”
The Local Artist Series production of “The Last Five Years” is directed by Deana A. Duncan and features Jessica Foley on piano. The performance is
80 minutes with no intermission.
Tickets are $15, and are available at www.WICAonline.com, or call 221-8268 or 800-638-7631.
