Lovingly lit, powerfully sung, heart-gripping.
Musical fans of a certain age adore Jason Robert Brown like a previous generation loved Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Schwartz. He writes complex music and collected a couple Tony Awards, but the real cult show in his arsenal is The Last Five Years. It's a heartbreaking tale of love that didn't work out.
The problem with The Last Five Years is usually that there's more yelling than singing. It's hard music and when that shows, it really shows. Mics don't really help – if you don't have the notes, you don't have the notes, and screaming doesn't help. Really Spicy Opera gets around this with two classically trained singers, Steven Halloin and Nicole Korbisch, as the doomed lovers Jaime and Cathy. It makes all the difference.
One of the other common problems with this show is that it loses momentum in the second half as voices get tired and the staging becomes one-note. Instead, the last four songs here are a swirl of shimmering lighting and powerful singing that propels the characters and the audience to the conclusion. Watch the lights swirl ominously in Halloin's dark "Nobody Needs to Know", or the subtle sliding of time, mood, and facial expressions in Korbisch's "Audition Sequence". It's an unusual amount of lighting (two designers are credited, Carrie Hurst and Basil Considine), but it makes all the difference.
Fringe Pick
