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raven_cromwellThe Last Five Years is an early 2000's musical Jason Robert Brown penned. Brown is one of the most underappreciated younger lyricists and composers in musical theater, and this is his best work to date, imho.
Plot's fairly bog-standard, for literary fiction: the dysfunction of a marriage; its promising beginnings and horrific end. But it works better than about any literary portrait I've ever seen.
Couple different factors work in its favor. 'Twas Stephen Sondheim, I believe, that said that the best songs consist of poetry with melody to complement them. And Brown excels at both poetry and arrangement. There's something about the compression required for poetry that I think is at the heart of why the musical works for me--has far more visceral punch than any lengthy litfic on the subject.
In full, the soundtrack's fourteen songs. He takes all the love and brutality and grief of a marriage and squeezes it into the length of your standard studio album. And then starts playing narrative tricks.
The musical begins with Kathy, telling the story in reverse chronological order. We go from her lamenting of the marriage's demise to Jamie, elated, after he's just met who he believes will be the woman of his dreams. And the timelines continue like that, looping back to the end of the affair with Kathy in her grief, slowly remembering her joy, while Jamie's joy becomes tented with bitter rage.
While neither of their hands are clean--because whose hands are ever clean in the dissolution of any partnership--Jamie is a character you by turns loathe and pity. A man caught too young by success, both sucked dry by the industry he loves and letting himself be lured away by the glitz and glamor, the "temptations" of other women. And getting a glimpse at the wreckage from Kathy's perspective lets Brown play mad foreshadowing fun with Jamie's lyrics. For a minute, a flaw gleams through, and then it's cloaked by the frenetic pace of his song, or some loving gesture to Kathy. Like mirages they flicker, as Kathy keeps trying to convince herself she's happy, and to recapture their joy until slowly, painfully, they're brought into focus.
And then, he hits us with a finale that left me gasping and weeping at both these people, more in love with the idea of being in love, of being rescued and freed by love, than they were ever in love with one another. It's pure poetical genius all the way through, with their timelines only intersecting about halfway through, for their wedding song.
One of the few soundtracks complete enough to be self-explanatory without synopsis, it was an absolute delight this week.
And if you want a taste before you make use of spotify , wonderful resource that it is, here's the musical opener:
Plot's fairly bog-standard, for literary fiction: the dysfunction of a marriage; its promising beginnings and horrific end. But it works better than about any literary portrait I've ever seen.
Couple different factors work in its favor. 'Twas Stephen Sondheim, I believe, that said that the best songs consist of poetry with melody to complement them. And Brown excels at both poetry and arrangement. There's something about the compression required for poetry that I think is at the heart of why the musical works for me--has far more visceral punch than any lengthy litfic on the subject.
In full, the soundtrack's fourteen songs. He takes all the love and brutality and grief of a marriage and squeezes it into the length of your standard studio album. And then starts playing narrative tricks.
The musical begins with Kathy, telling the story in reverse chronological order. We go from her lamenting of the marriage's demise to Jamie, elated, after he's just met who he believes will be the woman of his dreams. And the timelines continue like that, looping back to the end of the affair with Kathy in her grief, slowly remembering her joy, while Jamie's joy becomes tented with bitter rage.
While neither of their hands are clean--because whose hands are ever clean in the dissolution of any partnership--Jamie is a character you by turns loathe and pity. A man caught too young by success, both sucked dry by the industry he loves and letting himself be lured away by the glitz and glamor, the "temptations" of other women. And getting a glimpse at the wreckage from Kathy's perspective lets Brown play mad foreshadowing fun with Jamie's lyrics. For a minute, a flaw gleams through, and then it's cloaked by the frenetic pace of his song, or some loving gesture to Kathy. Like mirages they flicker, as Kathy keeps trying to convince herself she's happy, and to recapture their joy until slowly, painfully, they're brought into focus.
And then, he hits us with a finale that left me gasping and weeping at both these people, more in love with the idea of being in love, of being rescued and freed by love, than they were ever in love with one another. It's pure poetical genius all the way through, with their timelines only intersecting about halfway through, for their wedding song.
One of the few soundtracks complete enough to be self-explanatory without synopsis, it was an absolute delight this week.
And if you want a taste before you make use of spotify , wonderful resource that it is, here's the musical opener:
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Date: 2020-02-02 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2020-02-05 02:46 am (UTC)My path to Brown was actually through Last Five, though I didn't appreciate it as much then as I do now. I heard Norbert do If I Didn't Believe in you on one of the broadway channels, went: oh, that's quite pretty. Looked up the soundtrack and enjoyed it. But damn there's something to getting more life experience, to just having those bumps and bruises that lets you relate to this piece on a deeper level. It's like a lot of stuff I encountered in my teen years. I could certainly aesthetically appreciate the skill being showcased, but there just wasn't the foundation to relate, and then gaaah it's like fuck I'm hitting near thirty. Damn this just became very real.
(Similar phenomenon's also happening with Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. He becomes so much more of a, not sympathetic character, but an empathetic one when you, too, have been tossed around a bit and seen injustice up close.)