The Last Five Years

A bittersweet musical shows a five-year period in the love story and marriage between young, promising Jewish writer Jamie Wellerstein and ambitious actress Cathy Hiatt, who has come from the suburbs to New York to achieve fame. While he becomes famous with his debut novel, she has more problems getting established, but that is of course not the only difference pulling them apart.

We follow their romance almost exclusively through pop songs and musical numbers. His narrative runs from the beginning of their romantic relationship to the end of their marriage, hers goes the other way. Both narrative lines meet in the middle of the production, the moment that Jamie proposes. Although the development of a relationship between a man and a woman in this chamber musical is rather ordinary, because it’s limited by the three “standard” turning points, the first meeting, wedding and divorce, the novelty is the choice of two different time perspectives.

Text, lyrics and music were written by the American composer and playwright Jason Robert Brown who also played the piano at the first production in New York. The musical won the Drama Desk Award for the best music and the best text, and it was turned into a film in 2014. The first Slovenian production was directed by the young theatre artist Jasmin Kovic in the co-production with the Slovene Permanent Theatre in Trieste where it premiered in 2019. Patrizia Jurinčič Finžgar and Danijel Malalan are accompanied live by a six-member band of the music association Glasbena matica in Trieste.