One of Off-Broadway’s most popular musicals, The Last Five Years, by American composer and holder of three Tony Awards Jason Robert Brown, returns at the Greek National Opera Alternative Stage. An unusually love story set in New York comes to life for nine unique performances, on 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31 March 2024, offering an unforgettable music-theatre experience.
An emotionally powerful and intimate chamber musical about two New Yorkers in their twenties who fall in and out of love over the course of five years, the show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his own story chronologically; the two characters only meet once, at their wedding in the middle of the show.
Jason Robert Brown’s Drama Desk winner The Last Five Years that has been named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best musicals of 2001 is now presented on the GNO Alternative Stage at the SNFCC, conducted by experienced maestro Michalis Papapetrou, translated and directed by the specialist in the genre and prolific comedian Dimitris Dimopoulos, and starring Vassia Zacharopoulou and Paris Paraskevadis.
A different musical
The Last Five Years tells the bittersweet story of two young artists, from their first date to their last goodbye. In the musical, Cathy, a young and ambitious actress, and Jamie, a promising, emerging writer, meet, fall in love, get married and break up. The special narrative device set up by composer and dramaturg Jason Robert Brown starts with Cathy telling the story backwards, while Jamie gives his own version of it in a linear chronological order, from the beginning to the end. Through a series of wonderful songs the audience follows the course of this relationship, in a setting where the past and the present are caught up in a web of memories and actions, with the couple meeting each other in the same space and time only at their wedding in the middle of the show.
The musical premiered at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre in 2001 and was a big success. The next year it moved to Off-Broadway’s alternative stage scoring an equally great success and receiving raving reviews. Since then it has been translated into many languages and presented in many countries the world over: Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France and Great Britain. A testament to the show’s longevity and spurred by its regional popularity, The Last Five Years enjoyed an Off-Broadway revival at Second Stage in 2013, directed by Jason Robert Brown himself. A film adaptation was also released in 2014 starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.
