Casting has been announced for director Jonathan O’Boyle’s new actor-musician production of The Last Five Years at the Southwark Playhouse next month.
Wasted’s Molly Lynch (Sunset Boulevard, UK tour) will return to the South London venue to play Cathy opposite Oli Higginson (Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s Globe, Napoleon Blown Apart, Arcola Theatre) as Jamie.
After opening the 2019 season at the Southwark Playhouse with the London transfer run of the critically-acclaimed Hope Mill Theatre production of Aspects of Love, director O’Boyle and producer, Aria Entertainment’s Katy Lipson ,will bring their version of Jason Robert Brown’s award-winning musical to the Large from 28 February to 28 March 2020.
With musical direction and orchestrations by George Dyer, the production features the actors onstage at all times, playing the piano accompanied by a four-piece band led by Dyer. Choreography is by Sam Spencer-Lane, with set and costume design by Lee Newby, lighting design by Jamie Platt, sound design by Adam Fisher and casting by Jane Deitch.
Commenting on the project in a joint statement last year Lipson and O’Boyle said: “We have both been huge fans of this brilliant show from its UK premiere at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2006. But we didn’t want to just bring it back to the stage in its original form, we wanted to look at the piece in a fresh new way, for a new audience.
“The Last Five Years has such a pianistic driven score, with wonderful songs and an incredible story, so we wanted to explore what would happen if the actors remained part of the whole story, and never left the stage; instead playing the piano to further interact with the music. We can’t wait to develop this more in the rehearsal room and bring this new version of the musical to the wonderful Southwark Playhouse next February.”
Written and composed by triple Tony Award-winner Brown (Parade, The Bridges of Madison County), The Last Five Years premiered in Chicago in 2001 and debuted Off-Broadway in 2002. The musical which was made into a film featuring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan premiered in London in 2016 in a production featuring Samantha Barks.
Angela Thomas
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