Terrific staging of an ingenious show – if only we were allowed to enjoy it
In terms of elbow room, a budget airline lavatory cubicle would have the edge
The Last Five Years Southwark Playhouse, London SE1
★★★ ★★
This exceptionally fine staging of Jason Robert Brown’s insightful, emotion-rich and ingenious musical portrait of a relationship – from first flowering to final withering, five years on – last appeared in circumstances that now seem Edenic. Back in March, the audience at the Southwark Playhouse happily mingled in the bar area beforehand, cosied up beside each other during the show, and were able to applaud thunderously at the end after 90 minutes. One of the first London fringe venues to fling open its doors again since the theatre closures, the Playhouse has now acquired a touch of Pentonville Prison.
The queuing and entry system is no worse than your average supermarket but, lordy, what a configuration awaits you in the main auditorium. Face-masked audience members are directed to seats separated by wobbly see-through dividers (catering for up to a party of six, but a great deal of oppressive single booths); in terms of elbow room, as you squeeze into position, a budget airline lavatory cubicle would have the edge. It’s tolerable for a relatively short period, but I was left perplexed by the approach. It’s so packed together, it’s hard to feel medically reassured even if technically it’s all Covid-kosher; and as an experience the longawaited big night out feels like a variant of lockdown.
The financial incentive is clear (a 240-seat capacity has come down to about 110, not far off half capacity, when other performance spaces are managing around 30 per cent). But surely the preferable solution is to raise the ticket price (under £30 at the moment) and free up more space. That might elicit a few howls of outrage but, frankly, what’s on offer is West End standard, and amply justifies a more upmarket boutique ambience.
It’s a testament, all the same, to the calibre of the performances – honouring the filigree detail of the work itself – that my niggles and urge to wriggle lessened, at least until the
curtain call, at which, vexingly, standing ovations are banned.
Writing at the end of the Nineties, amid the turmoil of a marriage break-up, Brown struck on the simple yet crafty, even Sondheim-y idea of exploring a relationship from opposite ends of its duration. The man, a writer called Jamie, goes from wide-eyed infatuation and thrusting ambition towards self-satisfaction and rovingeyed dissatisfaction, while the woman, a less successful actress called Cathy, sings her heart out in reverse mode, winding back from desolation to first flushing adoration.
At the midway point is a duet of mutual rapture, evoking a fairy-tale wedding in Manhattan (shot in Central Park in the 2014 film adaptation). At this point, in Jonathan O’boyle’s slick but duly soulful production (with terrific orchestrations and musical direction by George Dyer), Oli Higginson’s Jamie and Molly Lynch’s Cathy sit, sing and play side by side at a
slow-revolving piano – petal confetti raining down on them, a heartstopping snapshot of bliss.
The music-box style staging answers the score’s shifting tempos and genres, by turns offering waltz and klezmer, keening ballad and upbeat rock-pop. Modulations of lighting further accentuate the metamorphosis of the heart – the way, bit by bit, we stop singing from the same hymn sheet, or realise we never quite were. Tilting between levity, earnestness and angst, the cycle could have a by-numbers feel, but the approach here is saturated with subtext – the way the springy and likeable Higginson (fresh from Guildhall) glances smugly at an imaginary mirror, or Lynch sits resentfully hunched and distant at the piano while her other half bitterly intones: “I don’t want you to hurt.”
In a way, the evening’s success lies partly in our own projections – these are essentially archetypes fleshed out with our experiences of romantic promise and pain, first date and separation. I just wish we could more easily leave our projected fears at the door. The performances (and show) are to die for, the rest of it not so much.