2 stars

**

The Last 5 Years is such a hard show to do – essentially a series of solos it can so easily become boring and also potentially confusing if you don’t realise that Cathy’s story goes backwards. I saw an early show in the run which unfortunately wasn’t great in either respect.

Having two clocks, one going backwards, is fair enough if you realise why they’re there, but the director put in several of Jamie’s scenes a ‘Cathy of the time’ which complicates things if you don’t know this.

The acting too needs a lot of work, Cathy over-acted a lot with ‘musical theatre arms’ and didn’t start singing the work ‘properly’ until I Can do Better That That which is right at the end. Jamie on the other hand really needed to act a lot more and his voice simply doesn’t suit the part. I’m not trying to be personal but JRB’s work needs trained voices to do it justice.

Musically it was fine, the orchestra was a bit loud at times for the voices and the pianist missed out a lot of the frills and riffs which makes JRB’s music so good.

On a plus point it’s not the worst production of L5Y I’ve seen, not by a long way…

Review by Alan.

Paradise in Augustine’s

Performances left on 24/26/28th August.