For Heather McGuigan, who plays Cathy in Jason Robert Brown’s song cycle The Last Five Years at Neptune Theatre, Opening Night was an almost twenty year dream coming to fruition.
“I first heard the cast recording the day the CD came out,” she says, “I was at the store, at TheatreBooks in Toronto, ready to receive my copy.” Cathy, like McGuigan, is a musical theatre actor, and for McGuigan the way Brown has written this character resonates strongly with the truth of her own life in the business. “You just get it,” she says, laughing, referring to Cathy’s experience in summer stock, and her endless auditions that lead nowhere, “everything that she’s going through: her feelings, her fears, her successes… it’s our life.”
The musical tells the story of Cathy’s five year long relationship with Jamie, but it is the way that Brown choses to tell the story that makes it so unique. Cathy begins the show with their break up, Jamie begins with their meeting, and Cathy tells the story backwards, Jamie forwards, until they meet in the middle with their engagement and wedding. The musical, which opened off-Broadway in 2002 starring Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz, quickly became a favourite for musical theatre students in both Canada and the United States.
For Aidan DeSalaiz, who plays Jamie at Neptune, he feels like he has been playing a bit of catch-up when it comes to the show. Since he went to Ryerson University’s School of Performance, not a more musical-theatre based program like at Sheridan College, DeSalaiz says it’s only since he’s been doing more musicals that he has become aware of the impact this musical has had. “ When I auditioned for [the show I was] thinking, ‘Oh my God, to get to do a two-hander musical would be a dream, and I started researching the music, and fell in love with it then.” He got the call saying he had booked the show while he was riding his bicycle through Allen Gardens in Toronto. He pulled over to take the call and was blown away and so excited, “I worked at Neptune once before, so I was just so thrilled to get the chance to come East again. I love the East Coast: Fresh Seafood. Craft Beer.”
Jamie is a writer who, at twenty-three years old, suddenly gets a book deal with Random House for his novel, which then gets a glowing review in The New Yorker. DeSalaiz explains, “… everything is coming together in his life: his career is taking off like a rocket ship, faster than he ever could have imagined, [and] that’s kind of thrilling, but also kind of scary. At the same time his love life is taking off. He’s met this woman- he’s never met anyone like her before- she’s funny, she’s sexy, she’s smart, she has a bit of a wild side… so the audience meets Jamie at… a massive high point. So where does he go from there? How does he deal with that success? How does he deal with his love? He is complex, because then he makes certain choices that aren’t the best to make. [He] makes me think of young movie stars who are shot to fame, often times it cripples them. I think [Jamie] gets seduced by some of the adulation, and the success that comes with that, and then how does he treat Cathy based on that?… They are so unevenly matched in terms of their careers, and in terms of their success. That can be tricky too. How do you lift each other up?”
While Jamie is riding the wave of gargantuan success, Cathy feels unable to break through and land an acting job that fulfills her. McGuigan says, “Cathy is just doing her best. She is working her way towards a goal, and she falls in love, and she has to negotiate everything that comes with life, and relationship, and striving for success.” She sees that negotiation for Cathy in terms of how she feels about Jamie’s success, “you are so excited for them,” she says, “and the jealousy is impossible to not have- just a little bit.”
For Lisa St.Clair, the show’s Nova Scotian Musical Director, she thinks that the crux of the problem for Cathy and Jamie is how young they are. “[The characters] can be really, really unlikeable, but they’re not,” she says, “they’re just really, really young. In every single song you go, ‘there’s a little piece of me in that. Yup, I know what that is.” She gives the example from the first song, “Still Hurting,” “covered with scars I did nothing to earn” as one that resonates powerfully, and she adds, “it’s all from one man.”
The score has two cellos and the piano, which St.Clair refers to as “the workhorse of it.” She adds, “I think of [the cello] as Jason Robert Brown’s voice. He sings. I think it’s kind of his voice: it’s romantic in places, and then sort of brutal in others. It’s neat. The cello is such an expressive instrument. It adds so much.” She reminds me that Brown studied with Stephen Sondheim and adds, “the music has that same sort of precision. So, if he’s written something: it’s for a reason. It’s really economical, the use of motif, and different themes running in the songs: the theme of the time, representing the passing of time, and the death knell of the relationship. It’s virtuosic in that it is difficult, but it’s not difficult for the sake of being difficult. Everything that happens happens for a reason to describe the joy of falling in love, or the darkness when things are failing, but there’s not an extra note anywhere. There are some that are harder to grab as you go by,” she laughs, “but it’s finely crafted. It’s beautiful writing.”
Like Aidan DeSalaiz, who was in Having Hope at Home at Neptune, Heather McGuigan is also familiar to Haligonian audiences having played the title role in Mary Poppins, and also having performed here in Shrek and A Year With Frog and Toad. She also shares his love for Halifax, saying, “I love walking around the city, the market is one of my most favourite places on the planet. I love this theatre. It’s always a joy to come back here, every single time. It’s just magical.”
The Last Five Years plays at Neptune Theatre’s Fountain Hall Theatre (1593 Argyle Street, Halifax) now until February 9th, 2020. Shows are Tuesday to Sunday at 7:30pm with matinee performances on Saturday and Sundays at 2:00pm. Tickets are $30.00-$74.00 and are available ONLINE HERE, in person at the Box Office at 1593 Argyle Street or by calling 902.429.7070. For more information, please visit this website.
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