TheatreSquared Looks at Love's Discord
Popular New Musical Follows Romance From Beginning to End
Last updated Thursday, November 16, 2006 4:56 PM CST in Entertainment
By The Morning News
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What happened in "The Last Five Years" depends on your sense of perspective. At least, that's what playwright Jason Robert Brown seems to prove in his musical of the same name.
TheatreSquared's two-person show, opening tonight at Walton Arts Center's Nadine Baum Studios in downtown Fayetteville, chronicles the romance between a New York actress and a successful young novelist. Her story starts at the end of their relationship; his begins on the day they met.
"The relationship between Jamie and Cathy lasts 60 months. In the space of 90 minutes, they go out on their first date, fall in love, get married and ultimately fall apart as a couple," says director Amy Herzberg, a drama professor at the University of Arkansas and one of the founders of TheatreSquared, the area's newest professional theater company. "Watching the rise and fall of a relationship simultaneously, you're acutely aware of everything that this couple has -- and has to lose. It's just heartbreaking: We know it's not going to work out, yet we want it to so desperately."
Of its Off-Broadway run, The New York Times said the show "pulses with dangerous, irresistible giddiness" and praised composer Brown's ability to "capture the delicious energy of being young, gifted and meteoric in New York City ... Mr. Brown confirms his sparkling facility as a composer, fluidly mixing diverse styles. They range from waltzes to rhythm and blues, from Sondheimesque urbanity to a clever 'Chorus Line'-like audition piece."
The show will run through Dec. 3. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays (except Thanksgiving night) and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $20 and $25 by calling 571-2728.
Discussing their last five years in this Q&A are the two actors, Nathan Riley and Valarie Andrews, both graduates of the UA drama program:
Q: Tell us about your personal and professional "Last Five Years."
Valarie: I have had six great years of training at the UA as an actor. I have received opportunity after opportunity to grow in roles I would've never imagined receiving. My first acting experience at the UA was "Assassins," which was directed by Amy Herzberg. Amy is the most talented director I have ever worked with, and it has been a pleasure working with her in my first professional show. Other shows I have been blessed with: "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Romeo & Juliet," "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change," "Winter's Tale," "Lucky Stiff," "Parade" and " Dinner With Friends." Last year, at an acting festival called ACTF (American College Theater Festival) I received an award from TVI acting studios, and I will be training in New York this summer for a month to work with casting directors from NBC and Paramount Pictures. I am a dangerous dreamer because when I have a dream I go for it. In March of this year a friend and I opened an Italian caf called Switchback Caf. I feel very honored as a young woman in 2006. At the age of 23 I feel I have successfully pursued my acting career, opened a restaurant and married the man of my dreams.
Nathan: For the last five years, I have been very busy. It all started with finishing up my bachelor's degree at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. From there I made a temporary yearlong move to California where I worked for a children's theater company that allowed me the opportunity to tour all over the Pacific Northwest. Three years ago, I came to work with the best acting teacher in the country. It just so happens that that acting teacher lives in Fayetteville, Ark.! I have now completed the MFA program in theater at the University of Arkansas, I am currently doing this show, and my roommate is headed to New York next week to find an apartment for us!
Q. What made this show appealing to you?
Valarie: "The Last Five Years" has been a favorite of mine since I heard it for the first time. The way Jason Robert Brown writes is so technically beautiful and smart. The music pulls together every inch of your soul into these two people's lives. The story that you get to see is so intricately told to make both the man's and the woman's side of the story understood.
Nathan: This show is not typical for me. Most of the time it takes me a while to get into musicals. I have to read the script and listen to the cast recording several times. But, with this show, I heard the first number that (the character) Cathy sings and cried. The music is beautiful, and the subject matter is quite relatable for anyone.
Q. What challenges have been different than working on a university show?
Valarie: I do feel completely different being in a professional show. For me there is a sense of new theater with this show. I feel like I have set a higher standard of responsibility and art for myself. My difficulty with this show has been the knowledge that this show is well-known and loved, and that I'm being paid for it. I have then since laughed off my insecurity and embraced this new challenge. I know what I am capable of, and it's just a matter of me believing in myself as a professional. Every rehearsal has been more than exciting. I have grown since the first rehearsal and will continue growing to the very last show.
Nathan: The only thing I can think of that scares me a little is, I'm getting paid for this one. I hope I am worth it.
Q. What do you think audiences will go away remembering?
Valarie: I believe every person in the audience will leave loving the music. I think emotionally it will make every couple hug their loved ones a little harder, listen a little more and appreciate the little things. I come home every night to my husband and watch him sleep, thinking how lucky I am to be in love with him. That's what shows like this are for -- to make you appreciate what you already have.
Nathan: I hope they will remember the heart. This is a project where everyone involved is passionately in love with the theater and what it can do for the human spirit. I think that will resonate.
Q. What's the secret to successful romance?
Valarie: I don't think there's one romantic secret in my life. For my romance, it takes my everything. No relationship or marriage can live without one giving their full heart, body and soul. Neal and I have been through great times and hard times in our first year of marriage, and it took us holding each other in the good and the bad. I believe wholeheartedly that romance is physical and verbal contact every day you're with that person. In my last show, "Dinner With Friends," there was a line that said "I cling to her." I think it takes clinging to someone to find successful romance. Not clinging in a juvenile connotation, but in a way that you are holding on tightly to what's important in a relationship: passion, trust, encouragement, perseverance and, of course, love.
Nathan: Jesus Christ! I wish I knew.
Answering the same five questions in this extended online interview are director Amy Herzberg and musical director Jeannie Lee:
Q. Tell us about your personal and professional 'Last Five Years.'
Jeannie: Professionally, I have spent the past five years working as a lecturer with the UA drama department and accompanist with the UA music department. As pianist,conductor and/or musical director for most UA musical productions since 1994, my most recent stage efforts have been Sondheim's SWEENEY TODD and INTO THE WOODS, Boar's Head productions of I LOVE YOU, YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE and CLOSER THAN EVER, and another of Jason Robert Brown's musicals, PARADE. Last fall's travels to New York City and a glorious month spent there studying in the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts helped me prepare forthis production of THE LAST FIVE YEARS. It also fueled my enthusiasm for the work of many new up-and-coming musical theatre writers, most notably Adam Guettel and William Finn, in addition to Jason Robert Brown.
Personally, I've spent the past five years (and the preceeding 18) with my husband Richard and our now college-age son Daniel and daughter Kirsten. Our home is drenched with all kinds of music, everything from Gregorian chant to show tunes to indie rock. I guess I still need to develop a taste for hip-hop, but that may yet happen as I'm digging into modern musical culture!
Amy: The last five years have been the happiest of my life. By no small coincidence, I got married six years ago. Not long after that I saw a sort of explosion in my professional life, both with my work at the university, with The Actors' Center in New York, and with helping to launch TheatreSquared. We've been anxious to capitalize on the wave of economic growth in the region, to invest in professional live theatre on a par with what's happening nationally. At the same time the UA acting program I head up has been graduating class after class of really strong, competitive actors, sending them off to New York and Chicago and L.A. Finally, I've gotten centrally involved with the National Actors Congress, getting to work with and alongside some of the top actors and acting teachers in the country.
Q. What made this show appealing to you?
Jeannie: I've completely fallen in love with Jason Robert Brown's intelligent and emotionally gratifying translation of natural speech rhythms and melodic arcs into dramatic musical situations. He completely transforms the old notion of "musical theater" -- which some people adore and some people abhor -- into something fresh and new: good theater which happens to be musical.
Amy: Its honesty. Jason Robert Brown is intensely observant of the human heart in a way no other composer-lyricist is. Another enormously appealing thing is the play's structure. We alternate back and forth between Cathy's viewpoint and Jamie's to get a picture of the five years of their relationship. But Cathy tells it from the end and Jamie tells it from the beginning. She starts with a kind of lament, trying to pull herself out of the personal nosedive caused by Jamie's departure. Immediately Brown juxtaposes a song by Jamie, who's flying high after having just met her. This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of theatre.
Q. What challenges have been different that working on a university show?
Jeannie: The longer, more intensive daily rehearsals packed into a four-week rehearsal period suit my preferences to a tee. The biggest challenge is staying prepared for each new day's rehearsal and getting the show, with the daily refinements and changes, "into one's bones" in time for opening night.
Amy: A production is a production, and I put every bit as much of myself into working on a university show as I do a professional show. That said, the overall stakes in a TheatreSquared production feel different. The five co-founders of this theatre have put ourselves and our reputations on the line, asked for support from a lot of generous people, all of whom are stakeholders in the result. Expectations are high and with them so are anxiety levels. I almost had to leave the theatre before opening night of "Bad Dates," our first show last May. I was that nervous. That's never happened to me before. At the UA you have the whole superstructure of the department and the university around you, supporting you and the show. With TheatreSquared it's just us. There's a growing community of support out there, but we're desperate not to let them down, not even a little bit.
Q. What do you think audiences will go away remembering?
Jeannie: I believe they'll be very moved by the immediacy and connection with each of the actors. In a show which shows us a marriage breaking apart, one is tempted to take sides: who is right? who is wrong? Amy has crafted a show and elicited performances from Nathan and Val which will open our hearts to BOTH the characters, taking us on their two journeys with all their emotional peaks and valleys. And it's set to such contagious, inviting music!
Amy: By manipulating time the way he does, telling the love story back-to-front and front-to-back at the same time, Jason Robert Brown elicits a sort of sustained poignancy that I've rarely encountered in the theatre. And even as the piece touches us, it is often wildly funny and piercingly truthful. I find myself rooting for this couple, even knowing things don't work out for them in the end. Audiences will remember these two characters, who are so richly drawn and wonderfully acted by Valarie and Nathan. Then there's the music & lyrics, which are brilliant -- and brilliantly brought to life by our musical director, Jeannie Lee.
Q. What?s the secret to successful romance?
Jeannie: Transparency. Love is based on trust; trust is based on honesty. Once you compromise the truth, you've begun the damage to the relationship.
Amy: I don't know if there's a secret. Perhaps it's just incredible luck to find one person you fall in love with anew every single day. If that's true, I'm the luckiest person on the planet.
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