The Last Five Years – Edinburgh Festival Fringe – PQA @Riddle’s Court

The Last Five Years continues at PQA @Riddle’s Court until 19 August 2018 (not 15, 22).

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

In the same set-up as the companion piece here, Closer Than Ever, back projections on an upstage screen set a scenic tone behind a large sofa.  This intimate two-hander has a ravishing score by Jason Robert Brown and is almost completely sung-through.

It is necessary to know the unusual timescale of the narrative for the play: Cathy is taking the journey from the end of their relationship to the start, whereas Jamie is telling their story chronologically. Both are in the same ‘present’ in the centre of the show where they get married. The rise and fall of the relationship between Jamie, a writer, and Cathy, an actress, is told in a series of vignettes from the singer’s point of view.

There are challenging demands made on the cast of Caitlin Tipping and Connor Burnett and when the dynamics work between them there are sublime moments. The intimacy may have been helped by reducing the levels on the head microphones here and there. Both have the capacity to fill the room unaided, but mics tend to be used as a matter of course these days. The voices seem rather tense in the earlier numbers, suggesting a bit of insecurity or poor warm-up. Another technical pointer would be to have used more appropriate projections (although it may be that there were difficulties in the performance viewed).

Tipping is particularly strong in the audition sequence – the writing here is a gift to both performer and audience and is perfectly matched by the music, beautifully rendered by Sam Coates on keyboards. Burnett’s moment follows shortly after in ‘Nobody Needs to Know’, especially when he strips his voice back into that more intimate register.

The finale, ‘Goodbye Until Tomorrow’ is simply beautiful and follows you around for the remainder of the day. If that intimacy could have been nurtured in the earlier numbers, the sense of ‘returning’ would have been more secure as the circular nature of the piece would have a place to live.

The sightlines in the venue are somewhat weak and it would have been good to see the upstage area used more as downstage visibility is reserved for the first two rows. There is a lot of good here and the bittersweet nature of the piece comes through exquisitely in the finale.

Fiona Orr