A contemporary song-cycle musical that ingeniously chronicles the five year life of a marriage, from meeting to break-up... or from break-up to meeting, depending on how you look at it.
There are two sides to every love story. The Last 5 Years, written by Tony Award winning composer Jason Robert Brown, is a bittersweet and ingenious musical. Unfolding almost entirely through song, it tells the stories of two New Yorkers as they meet, fall in love, marry, grow apart, and separate. The show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically. They alternate songs, merging for the first and only time in the middle of the show, at their wedding.
The Last 5 Years won Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics and garnered 5 additional nominations. The 2002 Off-Broadway premiere starred Tony Nominee Sherie Rene Scott and Tony Award Winner Norbert Leo Butz. The show has since been produced at almost every major regional theater in the US, and has been seen in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Spain.