Cathy is an actress. Jamie is a writer. Both of them are at the begin­ning of their careers when they meet. Five years lat­er after suc­cess for both of them they are break­ing up. Their indi­vid­ual sto­ries are told from dif­fer­ent point of the rela­tion­ship. Cathy’s sto­ry starts at the end of the rela­tion­ship and tracks back to where it start­ed. Jamie’s sto­ry starts at the begin­ning and fol­lows it through the rea­sons why it ends.

Both per­form­ers, Ellie Neal (Cathy) and Justin Rogers (Jamie), are excel­lent at con­vey­ing emo­tion­al depth through their singing as well as phys­i­cal move­ments and facial expres­sions. They give their char­ac­ters heart which is good since they’re often singing solo with min­i­mal vocal inter­ac­tion from the oth­er. Neal’s voice is sweet and light which she plays off against the strength she has imbued in her char­ac­ter. Rogers’ is con­fi­dent in voice and move­ment par­al­lel­ing his some­what self-cen­tred char­ac­ter.
Direc­tor Jon Hunter has them move around the ele­gant­ly sim­ple set adding visu­al inter­est to a musi­cal that could be very sta­t­ic. They are accom­pa­nied by Musi­cal Direc­tor Mark Dor­rell on piano.

Great work from two new per­form­ers.

  • The last five years by Jason Robert Brown, direct­ed by Jon Hunter, on at BATS The­atre to Sat­ur­day 5 Decem­ber 2015

N.B. There are two per­for­mances on Fri­day 4 Decem­ber.