Why "The Last Five Years" is Still One of My Favorite Musicals

A young couple moves to New York together; he, to follow a writing career and she to become a professional actor. He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, while she gets very little work and ultimately comes to see her career as a failure. As so often happens in such situations, the couple goes through a few years of angst and then breaks up.

This is the premise of The Last Five Years, one of my favorite musicals, which I only saw a few years ago and which is told with an impressively innovative structure. The lead character Cathy starts her story at the end, singing “Still Hurting” after the couple has broken up. As she works her way backwards, her husband Jamie tells his story more conventionally. They meet up once in the middle, during their wedding. 

So much for the tried-and-true rule that says we always need “a beginning, middle and end” in that order. This show proves we do not.

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