In The News
May 29, 2004
Review: The Last 5 Years
December 2, 2003:
AWARD: Ken Godmere recognized by Capital City Critics Circle
August 11, 2003:
REVIEW/STREAMING AUDIO: Radio review of "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" on CBC's Ottawa Morning
Duration: 9 minutes
CBC's Alan Neal, discussing the show with Alvina Ruprecht
August 8, 2003:
REVIEW: Small-scale musical a hit
Catherine Lawson, The Ottawa Citizen
August 6, 2003:
ARTICLE: Troupe aims to strike fresh note
Denis Armstrong, The Ottawa Sun
August 5, 2003:
STREAMING AUDIO: Radio interview on CBC Ottawa's "All In A Day"
Duration: 12 minutes
CBC's Brent Bambury, interviewing Ken Godmere and Kris Joseph
From the OTTAWA SUN, May 29, 2004
By DENIS ARMSTRONG, Ottawa Sun
Breaking up is hard to do. It's even harder when you have to do it to music,
and that's the challenge facing Zucchini Grotto Theatre with their new production
of The Last Five Years.
The show has been doing gangbusters in New York and Toronto since it premiered in 2002 and for good reason. Setting marital skids to music made Stephen Sondheim a rich man.
Tony Award-winning playwright Jason Robert Brown has created a juicy, hand-wringing tragedy that dances on the grave of Cathy and Jamie's marriage.
Cathy plays out their relationship beginning at the end, while Jamie begins from the day they first met. She's bursting with sad, pretty ballads while he trumpets happily about falling in love. Accompanied by Paul Legault's string sextet, songs such as Still Hurting, If I Didn't Believe In You, When You Come Home To Me, Goodbye Until Tomorrow and I Could Never Rescue You, resonate with emotion.
Directed by Ken Godmere, the production is small and, despite being on a tight budget, doesn't feel at all constrained. Godmere is the guy who put the new company on the national theatre map with another award-winning romantic two-hander, I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. He welds the same magic here.
The threadbare set is innovatively minimal with panels of New York and an onstage string sextet.
It's a good place for Nicole Milne to work. The actress delivers a show-stopping performance as Cathy. Her voice is thrilling and she knows how to act, even when the material is as light and sentimental as a greeting card.
The one spot where The Last Five Years limps rather than soars is Mark Swift as Jamie. What voice he has abandoned him early. He got it back eventually, but still there wasn't much to show. He didn't seem that comfortable on stage, certainly nowhere near Milne's comfort level.
Swift has an impossible time keeping up with her and that's where The Last Five Years runs off the rails -- until Milne sets the production back on course again.
Which seems apropos to all relationships. In theatre, as in marriage, one partner usually keeps the show going for both.
The Last Five Years continues at the University of Ottawa's Academic Hall until next Saturday.
Sun Rating: 3 out of 5