La Boite Theatre presents bittersweet love story The Last Five Years, a sung-through musical that follows one young couple as they unpick their five-year relationship from beginning to end and back again.

The Last Five Years

The Last Five Years, La Boite Theatre, 2022. Photo © Morgan Roberts

Directed by Darren Yap, with musical direction by James Dobinson, The Last Five Years is a 90-minute musical autopsy of a marriage. The plot follows Jamie and Cathy, both aspiring artists in their twenties – Jamie a novelist, and Cathy an actress – and unravels their love story in two different directions. Written and composed by Jason Robert Brown, based on his own first marriage, the musical premiered in 2001 and has since become a contemporary musical theatre staple.

Cathy’s narrative, and the opening number, places the audience at the end of the relationship and moves backwards towards the excitement of new love, while Jamie’s narrative progresses forward in time after their first date. The two characters share space, but not time, intersecting for only one scene, and one song, at their wedding. Jamie’s star is on the rise, but Cathy is struggling to...