The Last 5 years

Crash Bang Wallop's  production “The Last 5 Years” was a beautiful piece of theatre work.  It is a two handed musical operetta telling the story of Cathy and Jamie's marriage breakdown that these two teenagers performed in what I can only describe as a stunning performance, well beyond their young years. Performed in their own intimate theatre of 70 seats, the staging was  modern minimalistic open black stage, back projected screen, with individual items brought on per scene; that did set the scenarios very cleverly, along with lighting switches to divide the areas.

Opening the show was Ruby Hoggarth, as "Cathy", with a smooth pure voice and a song performed with lovely expressions and characterisation.  Following on we met Morgan Burgess as "Jamie", whose opening number was a lively song showing his voice range and capability, also great, and with bags of energy, expression, movement, and character. The third song, they combined in a moving duet, setting the beginning of the end, showing their skills working together and acting emotions. The two performers had a magical chemistry when dueting, and sincere solace for their solos, for a total of 16 songs.

The show alternated back and forth through time for each song, all shown by a backdrop graphic spinning clock and somewhat "eerie" music, and with a caption to illustrate where we land, from present day to five years ago. The music was not an easy genre, with some quite complex arrangements, often changing tempo and style within a song: both singers demonstrated their complete versatility. The language content of the piece I personally found was the only detract;  it makes me uncomfortable to hear such from young performers, and to an equally young audience.

In the song "Moving too fast"  was a telephone conversation, sung by Morgan very convincingly, with superb animation, and then good interactions with his immediate audience. His next song "The Schmuel Song", showed his skills at jumping into multiple characters and some "groovy moves" to give lighter comedy moments. The penultimate adulterous scene was so well played by this young man, it was hard to see how any older adult could have done it better. Very moving and very well done.   

The limit of the script was the only factor for Ruby as she performed equally and ably to Morgan, in opposite character to his success as an author, her character crumbled into self-doubt of a failing actress, giving moving renditions of her “audition song”, varying as time passed, being stung by the unfaithfulness of her husband, her singing styles from pure and sweet to ferocious and hurt. A true character performance.

The range of emotions in the piece, along with comedic elements gave the audience an absolutely enthralling and captivating evening; such that by the end of the continuous 90 minutes performance I felt positively drained; such was their talent and sincerity.  The piece at 90 minutes none stop was long for an audience to sit, but where to put a break and not spoil the mesmerising atmosphere, would be a difficult and possibly wrong decision. 

The end of the performance came with one of those moments of thoughtful audience silence followed by such a burst of warm ovation, that Director Paul Mason must have been so proud of this production. Well deserved.

We definitely left feeling we had been crashed, banged and walloped with entertainment. Many congratulations.

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