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The show uses a variety of musical styles, but never feels like parody. The songs are emotionally potent without ever slipping into gooey sentimentality (so unusual in a musical) and Brown's brilliant lyrics crackle with smart ironic humour. The foremost achievment of The Last Five Years however is its superb characterisation, given the potentially constrictive nature of the show's dramatic structure. By the end, you feel like you know Cathy and Jamie so well that you're desperate to know what happens to them next. Theirs is a genuine relationship with good times, bad times, indifferent times, and anyone who's ever been in love will find songs and episodes that resonate. Both the artists are excellent, making the CD a genuine experience, rather feeling like than a second hand rendition of the stage show.
Surely Brown is a genuine heir to Broadway heavyweights such as Sondheim and Schwartz. This CD represents a superb recording of a superb show from one musical theatre's most exctiting talents. If you want to hear the future of musical theatre, buy it.
But, enough of the gushing, on with the review. "The Last Five Years" is a two handed show, concerning the relationship of Jamie and Cathy. Jamie is an up and coming novelist, and Cathy a struggling actress. The show plots their relationship - from their meeting, through their marriage, to the eventual breakdown, and divorce. Yet, it's not as simple as that: Whilst we plot the relationship chronologically, from Jamie's perspective, with Cathy, we begin at the end - after she has broken up with Jamie - and move towards the begginning so that her "Goodbye Until Tomorrow", after their first date, but the last number in the show, become's unbearable in it's hope. The only time their path's cross is in the middle - the wedding. Every other song in the show is sung seperately (with them occassionally crossing each other, but, not singing with each other).
If you enjoyed this, it's certainly worth getting his other shows . A new talent to keep a watch out for.
Track eight in particular is a favourite of mine. If you like your musicals to have music that actually adds to the impact of the storyline (as opposed to the show-stopping Broadway variety) do yourself a favour - buy this!
