Theatre Review: The Last Five Years presented by Constellation Theatre Company mdtheatreguide.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mdtheatreguide.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Love, differing priorities and sweeping musical ballads are what audiences can tune into this weekend in the second installment of Penn State Centre Stageâs spring lineup.
Penn State School of Theatre premiered The Last Five Years last night, a musical originally written by Jason Robert Brown in 2001.
Two decades later, it was brought to life by actors Becca Suskauer and Jake Pedersen and director Jennifer Delac.
The show is being shared with the audience via a video stream.
The musical focuses on the breakdown of the relationship between Jamie Wellerstein and Cathy Hiatt with a combination of flashbacks and chronological storytelling. Both characters present their separate perspectivesâwith a twist.
A lot has happened in the last three years since Millennial Theatre Company last staged “The Last Five Years.”
The biggest change is a pandemic that has kept MTC and nearly every other local theater from performing for a live audience.
The group used Hopewell Theatre’s intimate performance space in Youngstown for its 2018 production of the two-character musical written by Jason Robert Brown.
“We only did one weekend, and the cast and I always joked about doing a revival at some point or a concert version or putting songs online at the very least,” director Joe Asente said. “Once we got through ‘Songs from the New World’ (an early musical by Brown that MTC presented online last fall) and realized how we could do it, the rights came available for ‘Last Five Years’ for remote performances.”