Reallife couple star in musical about love, loss

The central conceit of Jason Robert Brown’s 2001 musical “The Last Five Years” sounds simple: One member of a couple, Jamie, tells the pair’s story of love and loss chronologically, while the other, Cathy, recounts backward. In the whole show, the couple are in the same moment — and sing together — just once, when they get married.

In performance, the concept devastates, reminding us how we are so rarely on the same track as others in our lives, even our loved ones.

That feeling ought to resonate all the more strongly in Palo Alto Players’ digital production, which stars Marah Sotelo and Chris Sotelo (who are married in real life). Now when we’re all missing each other in profound ways, Jamie and Cathy’s story of what might have been, of not being in sync, might help us understand what we’re all experiencing, isolated in our shelters in place. Patrick Klein directs.

Palo Alto Players