The Last [Twenty-]Five Years & Me

[Note: This entry discusses specific plot points from the musical The Last Five Years. Please be mindful of this if you prefer to avoid spoilers.]

Earlier this year, I was not in the best place. In fact, the last two years (no pun intended) have not been my favorite. While I have nothing but gratitude for the bright spots and wonderful people in my life, there was a string of health and personal issues that took me away from feeling anything akin to positivity and removed me from things I love—like this blog, singing, and attending the theatre. I didn’t look forward to anything and the only thing that interested me was sleeping until I felt better.

Then, on February 3^rd, while I was recovering from my second surgery in under a year, a press release came out announcing that a concert version of Jason Robert Brown’s beautiful two-handed musical The Last Five Years starring Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler was going to come to New York in April after stints in London and California. This year was, it explained, the 25^th anniversary of the show and the concerts were a celebration of that fact. Suddenly, and I am not joking, everything seemed a little brighter.

It might seem odd to say the notion of seeing The Last Five Years made things better considering its plot isn’t particularly happy. It tells the story of the relationship between Jamie, an up-and-coming author, and Cathy, an actor who is struggling to have her career take off. The audience sees the full arc of their romance from its giddy inception to its upsetting collapse, told primarily through solos and with very little speaking. Further, the story unfurls with the characters working through two different versions of the timeline: Jamie tells the story from beginning to end while Cathy moves through in reverse chronological order. Thus, the audience gets an additional constant reminder that these two are rarely on the same page. There is only one moment when they appear in sync. It is at the center of the show, during their engagement and marriage, as part of a song called “The Next Ten Minutes,” which is the sort of romantic that makes you put your hand on your heart and sigh. This is an emotional and intimate show, and it is the rare one that usually makes me cry, so I look forward to all of the opportunities I get to see it. So, taking into consideration my love of the material, adding to it that it had been years since I last saw it (I missed the show’s long-awaited Broadway debut in Spring of 2025 because I was recovering from surgery for thyroid cancer), that I would get to see Jason Robert Brown conduct (always a thrill), and that it was starring one of my absolute favorite singers (Ben Platt), it is actually quite easy to see how I nearly bounced my way to the calendar to mark the date.

In the time between the announcement that the concert would come to New York and when it actually did, I had enough time to heal and to sit with the fact that the this was a 25^th anniversary production. I felt both as though it could not have really been that long and like The Last Five Years has somehow always been a part of my consciousness. In truth, I first learned about it after it had its world premiere in Skokie, Illinois, and before it opened Off-Broadway. I have seen so many theatre productions in my life that I rarely remember how I first heard about them. The Last Five Years is different. I remember it like it was yesterday.

In 2002, I was a high schooler determined to see every Broadway production that opened. That January I attended the closing of a musical called Thou Shalt Not, which in itself was not overly thrilling (though I still love the song, “Tug Boat.”) My primary memories of that show include an awkward partially-nude scene and an engrossing performance from Norbert Leo Butz. He played Camille, a man who is murdered by his wife and her lover but then haunts them so they don’t know peace. I enjoyed him so much that I waited afterward to talk to him. He received my compliments with warm humility, but really lit up when he began to tell me about The Last Five Years, a new project he loved and could not wait to bring to the city. I left midtown that day with the experience of Thou Shalt Not taking a back seat to my curiosity about The Last Five Years.

When a cast recording was released a few months later, with Norbert as Jamie and Sherie Renee Scott as Cathy, I devoured it and shared it with everyone I knew. I spent hours in now-defunct Broadway chat rooms combing through every detail with my online theatre-loving friends. I rambled about it to my voice teacher, who was, by now, used to this soprano telling her that she really wanted to sing songs written for men (my love of “The Schmuel Song” and “Nobody Needs to Know” runs deep.) Many musicals bring you into the minds of the characters, but for me Jamie and Cathy were special because they were imperfect, their relationship was messy, and their struggles were real.

Not long after The Last Five Years burst into my world, I learned that I could identify with it more than I wanted to, because my high school boyfriend unceremoniously ended our relationship since he had begun one with someone else. Did I ever plan on marrying him and him being the forever love of my life? Not at all. However, being cheated on hurts, no matter your age. In The Last Five Years, Jamie cheats on Cathy, so in my new reality, suddenly Cathy’s opening lyrics of “Jamie is over and Jamie is gone” hit a lot deeper than they had before. Had my relationship looked anything like the one in the show? Of course not. But to a teenager with Very Big Feelings who was dealing with heartbreak, the cast recording was a big deal. It went into heavy rotation as I licked my wounds and regrouped. Music has a way of making people feel seen and understood, and as much as I have always preferred Jamie’s songs, during that period I regularly wanted to give Cathy a hug.

The Last Five Years became something I always went out of my way to see whenever I could. I have particularly warm memories of seeing Jason Robert Brown sing the Jamie role opposite Lauren Kennedy Brady’s Cathy at Cooper Union with college friends. This was especially exciting because we all loved the special layer that Jason added by performing his own work. It became the first of many times I’ve seen him in concert. Plus, we all knew Lauren had been the original Cathy during the Skokie run but had only ever seen her on grainy bootleg footage (…sorry.) To this day, her rendition of “Goodbye Until Tomorrow”—Cathy’s exuberant final number about the joy of beginning her relationship with Jamie—is my absolute favorite. If you haven’t heard it, listen to it immediately. You can find it on her Songs of Jason Robert Brown album. It overflows with youthful excitement and is the first thing that comes to my mind any time I experience a similar surprising joy.

As April approached, I got more excited for the 25^th anniversary concert, but I was still wary. I love the show so much that I feel like I grew up with it. After all, when it first entered the musical theatre pantheon, I was significantly younger than Jamie and Cathy, and now I am older than them. I have developed a much more nuanced appreciation for what it is like to be their ages, trying to figure life out, making mistakes, and facing barriers. I hold a special place in my heart for these utterly human characters who simply should not and could not be together. My wariness stemmed from the fact that I had never seen Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler together before and had purposely avoided much of the footage of them from prior performances. While I had a longstanding love of Ben’s work, I was only familiar with Rachel’s film credits, and I had been so out of the loop during my last two years that I had no idea how I would take it, if I would feel anything, or how they would compare to the versions I’d been listening to for over two decades. I can admit it…I am a harsh judge at times. Okay…all the time. Ask my friends, they will verify.

I took my seat in Radio City Music Hall and marveled at the amount of people there who buzzed around me expressing similar long-term loves and passionate feelings about Jamie, Cathy, and who was the best (or worst) of the actors they had witnessed or heard. The enthusiasm was palpable and it was amazing to be back in a theatre after all this time. I would be lying if I said I didn’t get emotional just seeing the poster outside with TONIGHT SOLD OUT emblazoned across it. But still, even then, I was prepared to be disappointed.

From the first note to the last I was there with them, hanging on to every word and drawn in by Ben and Rachel’s depictions of Jamie and Cathy as a pair who were hopeful, loving, flawed, and hurting. Given the nature of the show and how the actors are largely isolated from each other, it could easily happen that the audience feels like they are not part of the same couple. I’ve seen versions where it feels like you are watching two people who, instead of being in a relationship, are doing their own personal concerts with no connection to the material or each other. I needn’t have worried, because Ben and Rachel absolutely nailed it. From the onset it was clear both why they would fall for each other and why they would not work. They appeared to thrive off of each other’s energy even when they were not interacting. As heartbreaking as the story is, it was a thrill to ride along with them on it.

By the time the show ended and everyone leapt to their feet I was sure I had just seen my new favorite incarnation. All of the completely subjective personal hopes for it that I had in my head were met or exceeded. I loved their use of the stage. I loved their connection. I enjoyed Rachel’s “Summer in Ohio” (a song that has never been one of my favorites) and felt her “I Can Do Better Than That” soared. I’d gone into it hoping to have Ben be as good as I imagined he’d be when I read the casting, but I did not expect to leave with new definitive versions of “The Schmuel Song” and “Nobody Needs to Know.” I walked out of the theatre feeling overwhelmed by how much the production made me feel. I could not wait to hear it all again.

Soon, I broke my anti-streaming rules (I prefer to own my own music) and subscribed to a service entirely because it was the only way to listen to the album when it dropped. If you told me today that I am responsible for the majority of the plays of “Nobody Needs to Know” I would accept it. It has always been my favorite, but I did not expect to feel so taken by it that night that it was like experiencing it for the first time. It is probably the hardest song in the show to land successfully, which made Ben’s version all the more impressive to me. It is quite long and it immediately confirms that Jamie has cheated, placing him in an utterly unlikable position late in the show and making much about their split worse than viewers might have originally thought. This can easily cause the audience to be too angry to listen to what he says. Although I’ve heard the song hundreds of times, when Ben’s Jamie used the imagery of their relationship as a treehouse he struggled to keep together before ultimately admitting “And then I start making/Conscious, deliberate mistakes” my heart shattered for him, for Cathy, for everyone who has ever had a relationship crumble. As Ben continued to add emotional layers while the song progressed with increasingly poignant orchestral punctuation, I sat in awe of the vulnerability, rawness, and awareness of self-destruction apparent in his performance. It has stayed with me every day and certainly been a significant part of why I listen to it regularly. I know I am not alone in loving this performance, too, because multiple friends have told me this was the first time they liked the song. It really was that good.

Seeing this special concert of The Last Five Years and having that recording has done more for me than I ever anticipated. It brought me joy and was the perfect way to return to the theatre. It gave me a new favorite performance. It reminded me of all the things I love about the performing arts. It caused me to return to my blog. And, in truth, it even inspired me to start singing again after a hiatus that I never intended to take. I have loved this musical for almost 25 years, and it is quite possible I love it more now than ever before.