What might have been in ‘The Last Five Years’
Fresh out of Columbia, he’s found an agent, a publisher for his novel and his “Shiksa Goddess,” as he puts it in one number of Jason Robert Brown’s two-character chamber musical, which opened Wednesday, May 18, at the Geary Theater.
An aspiring actress who keeps striking out at auditions, she’s stuck playing summer stock in Ohio.
[...] since it first opened 15 years ago, plenty of audiences have found that to be so, turning the show into a regional theater perennial.
Seibert and Zak Resnick, who plays Jamie here with a callow charm, give it their all to bring the magic to the American Conservatory Theater production.
[...] “The Last Five Years” hamstrings the performers with underwritten characters and a theatrical conceit that turns this 85-minute piece into an oddly hermetic evening which never brings the couple to full emotional life.
The Last Five Years” brings to mind such reverse-chronology works as the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along” and Harold Pinter’s marriage-and-adultery play “Betrayal.
In a moment that cries out for a combustive duet, Resnick plays it solo, addressing the number to her empty pillow on the bed.
The scenes and songs, which begin to sound alike, shuttle past each other without paying richer dividends.
Brown (“Parade” and “The Bridges of Madison County” on Broadway) may be making a point about the isolating nature of ambition and the corrosive effects it can have.