The Last Five Years

Reading Rep Theatre

Playing until 12th October 2025

Book tickets

Photo credit: Alex Tabrizi

{PR Gifted ticket}

A single love story unfolded on two separate journeys, The Last Five Years tells the story of Cathy (Martha Kirby) and Jamie (Guy Woolf), with Cathy beginning her narrative at the end of their relationship and going backwards while Jamie describes his from the beginning.

When boiled down to the most basic components, Jamie is an aspiring writer and Cathy is an aspiring actor. They fell in love, grew apart and became resentful of each other until they parted ways. However, it is smart to keep the plot points relatively simple as telling the story in a non-sequential or straight forward chronological manner is indeed exceptionally challenging.

Even though I came into this blind, the combination of Hal Chambers’s direction and the various creative decisions like costumes and characters’ movements by Ethan Cheek and Georgina Lamb, respectively, made the timeline clear throughout. Right off the bat, the narrative begins with Cathy alone in the apartment following Jamie’s departure and Jamie at the start of his relationship with Cathy. The narrative will then go down their respective paths, finally meeting at an intersection when the two got married, and continue on until the two characters end up in the other’s starting point.

Composed of two main actors, they are each given their own moments to shine, shifting constantly between alone and self-reflections and their interactions. The use of a translucent wall by Ethan Cheek, which doubles up as an infinity mirror in the centre of the stage adds a huge amount of depth and layer to the story telling. In my opinion, it could be interpreted as the passing of time and also as if they are looking at each other but never knowing whether they are looking at their partner face-to-face or just an illusion of them, especially as their relationship progressed and when rifts begin to form.  

Cathy and Jamie are very different people with contrasting personalities; this is well-established early on through the two first musical numbers, “Still Hurting” by the more serious Cathy, and “Shiksa Goddess” by Jamie who is more confident and hopeful. The songs also serve another function to convey where the characters are psychologically.

Both Kirby and Woolf made some fantastic acting choices to deliver their respective characters. Throughout the performance, Kirby has made it abundantly clear that Cathy is more emotionally guarded, hesitant and she struggled to come to terms with Jamie’s growing success as a novelist, while her own career has not developed in the way in which she anticipated. However, as she recounts the earlier days of her relationship, Kirby is also able to show that Cathy has not always been a negative person and she was very different when she first started dating Jamie, and it was a genuinely a joy to see the person Cathy used to be by the end of the show. Woolf on the other hand, has perhaps best demonstrated Jamie’s funny side during “The Schmuel Song”, dancing with his arms to represent the hands and pins of a clock while recounting what Schmuel, the made-up character in the song, wish would have happened. During this scene, he even manages to convince Cathy to dance along and play the clock. This delightfully crafted interaction and Jamie’s eventual proposal to Cathy fully sell their relationship and how these two very contrasting people became romantically involved.

There are four musicians on-stage with Kirby and Woolf, Ellie Verkerk-Hughes on the piano, Rebecca Demmer on the cello, Wills Mercado on the guitar and Angus Tikka on bass guitar. Though they initially appear to play small roles, these grow as the story progresses as they become the environment and key players at various points of the story, including Jamie’s fans and those at the party to celebrate his novel’s success, and eventually Demmer even played Jamie’s mistress. Reflecting on it, many of the interactions between these actor musicians are more frequently associated with Jamie’s scene, further highlighting Cathy’s loneliness as their relationship evolved.

The creative choices, direction and performance work synergistically in this intimate space at the Reading Rep, enhancing and elevating each other, enabling the audience to bear witness to the nuances that has gone into the creation of this production.

Creatives

Writer: Jason Robert Brown

Director: Hal Chambers

Music Direction: Ellie Verkeck

Set and Costume Designer: Ethan Cheek

Lighting Designer: Jonathan Chan

Choreographer and Movement Director: Georgina Lamb

Casting Direction: Harry Blumenau