By Jason Ritchey, news correspondent

“The Last Five Years” is neither romance nor comedy, nor anything specific, really.

“It kind of fits its own category,” director Jonathan Carr said of the two-character show with two timelines and six cast members, which opened at Northeastern last night.

“It’s fundamentally a love story that takes place over five years,” Kayla Allen, a third-year English major, said. “It follows Jamie and Cathy as they fall in love, get married and then break up.”

Allen is one of three cast members on the playbill as Cathy, but neither she nor the rest of the cast will spoil why a two-person musical has six cast members.

“You’ll have to come to the show and find out why,” she said.

The cast members said they all gained perspective from having two people interpreting their character at the same time.

“It’s somewhere in between a performance and a group research project,” Carr said of the casting. “The play doesn’t give easy answers or smoking guns, and instead gives very vivid snapshots of  [Cathy and Jamie]. [Allen’s] first line is ‘Jamie is over. Jamie is gone.’ The question becomes why and how – and also to watch them get closer and closer and then farther and farther apart. ”

Senior theatre major Zahan Mehta, who plays Jamie, gave his perspective on the complexities of the pair’s connection.

“‘Relationship’ and ‘love’ get lumped together, but the piece is about more than just their love,” Mehta said. “I’m from India, and I have friends whose parents have had arranged marriages and they can build a family in a loving and nurturing environment without that intense typical love from the start. It’s about love and exploring that in a microcosm of their relationship.”

Allen further explained the unconventional structure of the piece, which deviates from the traditional linear format of storytelling and incorporates a third dimension.

“Cathy tells her story from the end to the beginning, traveling back in time, and Jamie travels forward in time,” she said. “The wedding isn’t the happy ending, it’s in the middle. We lead to and fall away from it, or we fall away from it, then lead to it.”

Senior industrial engineering major Kevin Parker, who saw the show’s dress rehearsal, believes that the structure makes the piece distinct only on the surface, while the plot itself is reminiscent of other love stories.

“Otherwise it’s just a story about two people who fall in love and then get divorced,” he said. “But I think the strength of the music is the most compelling part of the piece, not the story itself or the [story]telling device. Because the heart of the show is its music, it’s so important for this show to be done by strong performers, not just strong singers. I’m so glad Northeastern was able to showcase some really strong musical theatre performers with this piece.”

Mehta agreed that the musical score was one of the most notable aspects of the performance.

“The degrees of comedy and drama, and how they can coexist in one song, really stand out to me,” he said.

Artistry is an integral part of the piece. Not only is the production almost entirely in song, but the two characters are both artists themselves – Jamie is a budding author and Cathy a stage performer.
“Since I work with young, ambitious artists, it was fascinating for me to be able to think about how might they want to make a living in art,” Carr said. “The friction between the couple’s love lives and professional ones, and watching them succeed and fail in different ways at different times is what tears them apart. The message isn’t to be daunted, and I don’t think we should be. We should be awake.”

Photo by Grant Terzakis