SALT LAKE CITY—Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years is a storytelling marvel—a musical with very limited dialogue, only two performers, and a 90-minute run time that somehow feels expansive, intimate, and emotionally shattering all at once. The Hart Theater Company’s production, directed by Morag Shepherd with music direction by Anthony Thomas Buck, does full justice to Brown’s ingenious structure and piercingly human score.
For the uninitiated, The Last Five Years chronicles the rise and fall of a five-year relationship between aspiring actress Cathy and emerging novelist Jamie. What makes the show unique is its narrative architecture: Cathy tells the story backward, beginning at the dissolution of their marriage, while Jamie moves forward from the breathless moment they first meet. Their timelines run on opposite tracks, intersecting only once in the middle—on their wedding day, during the duet “The Next Ten Minutes.” Otherwise, they inhabit the same stage but rarely the same moment, sharing space without sharing time. That structural choice transforms a familiar love story into something far more riveting.
Hart’s production embraces this device wholeheartedly. With only two primary set pieces—a desk anchoring one end of the stage and a bedroom scene anchoring the other. Rebecca Lichfield (Cathy) and Diego Rodriguez (Jamie) fluidly move from one location to the other, often passing through the same space while occupying entirely different moments in time.
Lichfield and Rodriguez are beautifully matched, both vocally and dramatically. They navigate Brown’s intricate score with confidence, clarity, and warmth, but what elevates the evening is their storytelling—a necessity in a show with almost no spoken dialogue. Facial expression, gesture, posture, and even breath become extensions of narrative.
Lichfield’s Cathy channels heartbreak from the start, delivering her opening number with exhausted devastation that gradually thaws into youthful joy as the timeline rewinds. She is charming and whimsical in “A Summer in Ohio,” tossing off self-deprecating punchlines with the same ease she brings to gut-punch moments of vulnerability.
Rodriguez begins in a place of idealistic bliss and progresses toward moral failure, regret, and loss. His Jamie is charismatic, clever, and earnest. When the emotional shift arrives in “If I Didn’t Believe in You,” Rodriguez lands the song like a revelation, expressing frustration, exhaustion, admiration, and despair in a single vocal arc. His choices make Jamie neither villain nor victim, just tragically human. By the final sequence, real tears spill down his face as he reaches the end of his five-year journey.
The live six-person orchestra (unusually placed center stage) is a masterstroke. Led by Anthony Thomas Buck, the musicians provide a lush musical landscape without ever overwhelming the singers. In one particularly clever moment, Cathy folds the orchestra into her audition story, interacting with Buck as though he were a casting director–a witty acknowledgement of the cast’s size and a fun surprise for the audience.
Production elements are clean and thoughtful. Lighting subtly marks time shifts and emotional pivots; costumes evolve gracefully as the years pass; and the sound—long a hallmark of the Eccles Regent Street Black Box— is impeccable. In a venue where every breath can be heard, clarity matters, and this production delivers.
The audience was undeniably enthralled. There is no intermission, but no one seemed to miss it. Concessions sat untouched, bodies remained still, and the room hung suspended on every note. When the final overlapping number arrives—Cathy singing “Goodbye Until Tomorrow” full of fresh hope just as Jamie breaks apart singing “I Could Never Rescue You”—it is devastating. One is saying goodbye for the moment; the other, goodbye forever. The emotional dissonance is the point, and the production captures it with heartbreaking finesse.
While many audiences know the 2014 film adaptation, this stage version lands cleaner, clearer, and more potent. Without timestamp cues, viewers must track the shifting chronology themselves, but the reward is a richer understanding of how two good people can love each other deeply and still fall apart. Once again, the Hart Theater Company succeeds at telling a tender story—a truthful portrait of love, loss, and the unbridgeable distance that can form between people who once promised to spend forever together.
[box] The Hart Theater Company’s The Last Five Years runs through January 18 at the Eccles Regent Street Black Box (144 Regent Street, SLC) with shows Monday and Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and a Sunday matinee at 4:00 p.m. The content advisory is 16+ for language and adult themes. Tickets range from $25–36.50. For tickets and more information, please visit https://www.saltlakecountyarts.org/venues/regent-street-black-box/#events. [/box].
