The Last Five Years: he sang, she sang
New theatre company. New venue. What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing if Thursday’s opening night is any indication.
The fledgling Why Not Theatre Company is presenting Jason Robert Brown’s award-winning musical The Last Five Years in coordination with Theatre Kelowna Society. It is the first production in TKS’s newest performance space: a 34-seat mini-theatre at Rotary Centre for the Arts in downtown Kelowna also used to build sets for TKS shows.
Performances in The Set Shop Venue continue at 7 p.m. tonight (Saturday, Jan. 5) and Jan. 10-12. Tickets are $20 with students and those under 25 at $15, and available online at: whynottheatre.brownpapertickets.com. Seating is limited.
The 90-minute production stars 22-year-old Thomas Fournier as Jamie and 19-year-old Megan Edwards as Cathy in an emotionally powerful and intimate story of two New York artists in their twenties who fall in and out of love over the course of five years.
The show has an unconventional structure: Cathy tells her story backwards in time while Jamie tells his story chronologically. It is not he said, she said but he sang, she sang.
Both are well known for their vocal and acting abilities: Fournier as an impressive Hedwig in Fred Skeleton Theatre Company’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch in October; and Edwards playing an over-the-top Lucy in New Vintage Theatre’s production of A Charlie Brown Christmas in December.
With her first musical number and the show opener, Edwards begins this roller-coaster ride with a tearjerker that Jamie is moving on. In an unconventional staging, she leaves through the audience aisle and Fournier enters the stage via the same route.
The two — almost always individually — take us through their introduction to the ongoing challenge of two disparate careers to infidelity to Jamie leaving with his suitcase “You never saw how the cracks had widened” — in spite of Megan’s last-minute plea: “I will be waiting for you.”
Edwards instantly impresses with a heartfelt performance that is in sharp contrast to her frenetic Lucy. In this intimate venue, the audience is only a few feet away and Edwards wears her emotions on her sleeve.
Fournier — who wears many hats as company creator, artistic director, actor, singer and playwright — is the consummate professional. Like Edwards, he expresses a wide range of emotions as their relationship goes through the ups and downs of a typical pairing with the added complication of each having a successful career, Jamie as a novelist and a Cathy as a touring actor. Both show a level of acting maturity that belies their young ages in tackling this ambitious musical favourite and memorization challenge.
My personal highlight was Jamie’s animated rendition of The Tale of Schmael which echoes a similar Fiddler on the Roof scene and Cathy’s “Son of a bitch, I guess I’m doing something right.” Spontaneous clapping following numerous numbers with everyone leaping to their feet after the final scene.
Also impressive was the use of seven calendars hanging from curtains on each side of the stage, one calendar behind the bed. When unfolded one by one, they not only reflect the passage of time but widen the perspective of a small stage.
In an interview, Fournier expressed his sincere thanks for the support he received and the contributions from artists and theatre groups across the valley that made it a community-built production.
The show and the company came hand-inhand, he explained.
“The Last Five Years is a show I’ve wanted to be a part of since I first heard about it five years ago. I’m not joking. It was literally five years ago. The music is gut-wrenching and beautiful. The story helped me unpack a lot of heartbreaks. This show tells the story of a young couple who, throughout the piece, are disconnected in emotion, time and space, and are fighting to have their voice heard.”
They search for the answer on where their relationship went wrong, he said. “And we, as the audience, get to be a part of unraveling that mystery. I mean, who doesn’t examine failed relationships in their mind over and over again? But I feel what this show does really well is teach the importance of perspective, especially in romantic relationships. We often get caught up in our own experiences, and either fail to consider or outright disregard the opposite perspective entirely. I hope it helps us learn to listen to each other a little more; I think the world needs that right now. That’s what attracted me to this show. It’s incredible.”
So, in a sense, it is couple’s therapy for those in the audience.
In spite of that emotional complexity, “I initially thought that it’s a comparatively easy musical to put on. No big cast; no giant set pieces; no dance numbers. I learned that I was very wrong. This piece is full of challenges. One of which is the show’s unbelievably challenging score, played masterfully in short time by our pianist Graham Vink. But I didn’t know about those challenges until we were off the ground. I just thought ‘Hey, why not put this show on?’”
When he attended the Ryerson School of Performance’s BFA acting program, Fournier recalls he was told “over and over again to ‘make our own work’ and not sit around waiting for someone to cast us at an audition.”
“It really took off when I met Megan Edwards last summer at a recital for the students of my voice teacher (and now music director) Norene Morrow. In my mind, I thought ‘Holy crap, she can sing. She’s Cathy.’”
Morrow introduced them and several months later, voila The Last Five Years.
“The rest of the show came with off-the-cuff decision-making. We picked dates based on our schedules, making sure neither of us would be busy with other productions at the same time,” said Fournier.
“We applied for the rights and they asked us for the name of our theatre group. I picked the name we ended up with because the production had this motto from the beginning: ‘Why not?’
“It’s not intended to grow or become anything more. It’s here for six nights and that’s it. None of what you see on stage could’ve been possible if it weren’t for the generosity and support of Kelowna’s theatre community. Whether they donated their time, eyes, voices, talents, curtains, lights, speakers, chairs, etc., they were what made this production happen. That’s what Why Not Theatre became: a community supporting the simple idea of ‘let’s make art, because why not?’”