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Portland Center Stage
presents
The Last Five Years Written and Composed by
JASON ROBERT BROWN
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Artistic Director | Chris Coleman
(April 26 – June 22, 2014)
PORTLANDCENTERSTAGE Presents
The Last Five Years Written and Composed by
JASON ROBERT BROWN
Directed by
Nancy Keystone
Musical Director
Rick Lewis
Scenic and Lighting Designer
Daniel Meeker
Costume Designer
Jeff Cone
Sound Designer
Casi Pacilio
Stage Manager
Kelsey Daye Lutz*
Casting
Brandon Woolley
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CAST
Merideth Kaye Clark*…………………Cathy Hiatt
Drew Harper*…………………Jamie Wellerstein
PIANIST
Eric Little
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of
Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.
Originally produced for the New York stage by Arielle Tepper
and Marty Bell. Originally produced by Northlight Theatre
Chicago, IL.
The Last Five Years is presented through special arrangement
with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized
performance materials are also supplied by MTI.
421 West 54th Street, New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-541-4684 Fax: 212-397-4684
www.MTIShows.com
The videotaping or other video or audio recording of this
production is strictly prohibited.
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I remember asking Fran Solomon what the secret to her
marriage was. Fran was a social worker in Atlanta, who for
many years led the volunteer organization at my theater, Actor’s
Express. Her husband, Bob, was a dentist. They grew up in
upstate New York, and by the time I asked my nosy question,
they’d been together for over 30 years. Fran thought about it for
a second, and replied, “Luck.” I laughed, and said, “No really.”
She said, “Really. Look – you meet someone when you’re 19 or
20 or 30, and you find them attractive or engaging or fun to be
with – and you take the leap. And time passes and you both
grow and change and evolve. And there is absolutely no
guarantee that the person you become at 50 is going to be
remotely interested by the person they have become when
they’re 50 or 60 or 70. It’s really luck that the paths that Bob
and I walked down continued to have enough common ground
that we still want to share that with each other.”
It’s that common ground, and the difficulty of maintaining it,
that Jason Robert Brown is excavating in The Last Five Years.
Having launched onto the scene young (his first off-Broadway
show opened when he was still in his mid-20s, his first
production at Lincoln Center happened before he was 30), he
couldn’t fully grasp why his marriage hadn’t made the journey
intact. The show was his effort at understanding what happened.
And it’s easy to see why he’d spend time on it. Think of all the
relationships you’ve left behind through your life: friends,
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family, lovers – it’s always such a challenge to understand why
some withstand the ravages of time, and others go their own
way. Especially given how hard it is to see clearly outside the
narrative we’ve constructed inside our heads about who the
other person is and what came between us.
Finding musical life for those ‘narratives’ is the true pleasure of
this piece. Brown has described his introduction to musical
theater in seeing Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd by saying
that if he hadn’t discovered Sondheim, he probably would have
been in a rock band and attempted to be Billy Joel. It’s the
intersection of those influences that you feel at work in The Last
Five Years: a deft hand quickly carving out musical settings that
are directly invented out of the character’s personality and
situation (a la Sondheim), but connected to melody that feels
transparently popular in its roots.
Take the ride, work the puzzle, hum the tunes, look back and
look forward.
Merideth Kaye Clark
Cathy Hiatt
Merideth Kaye Clark is an artist, traveler, musician, songwriter,
singer and actress. PCS: Tzeitel, Fiddler on the Roof. Northwest
theatrical credits: Nancy, Oliver! (The 5th Avenue Theatre);
Clara, The Light in the Piazza (Portland Playhouse); Lilli/Kate,
Kiss Me Kate (Clackamas Repertory Theatre). Other regional:
Eva Peron, Evita (Northern Stage); Olivia, Twelfth Night
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(Alabama Shakespeare Festival); How the Grinch Stole
Christmas (The Old Globe); Amazing Grace (Goodspeed Opera
House); Rose, Meet Me in St. Louis (Irish Repertory Theatre)
and many more! She has participated in numerous
developmental readings and has originated roles in two off-
Broadway musicals. Merideth performed the role of Elphaba in
the First National Tour of the Broadway musical Wicked over
150 times in 35 major US cities. Originally from Kansas City,
Missouri, Merideth has a B.S. in Neuroscience and Behavioral
Biology from Emory University and an M.F.A. in Musical
Theatre from San Diego State University.
Drew Harper
Jamie Wellerstein
Drew Harper made his professional theater debut at
PCS, creating the role of Doug in Threesome for the 2013 JAW
festival. This was followed by Motel in Fiddler on the
Roof (PCS), Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (Portland
Playhouse), and Giuseppe in The Light in the Piazza (Portland
Playhouse). Drew is thrilled to be joining Actors' Equity
with The Last Five Years. Before moving back to the Northwest,
Drew spent five years in New York City where he worked
mostly in film production. He studied American History and
Theater at N.Y.U., Queer Theory at Evergreen State College and
Arabic at the International Language Institute in Cairo.
Humble thanks to the Portland theater community for
welcoming him as a comrade and a pupil. Loving thanks to his
family, without whom none of the blessings of his life are
conceivable. Special thanks to Merideth, for the privilege and
the pleasure of the journey.
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Eric Little
Pianist
A musician and actor native to Portland, Eric Little made his
debut at PCS as Tobias Ragg in Sweeney Todd.
He recently music directed Les Misérables at Spokane Civic
Theatre, Cats and Drowsy Chaperone at Broadway Rose
Theater Company, White Christmas at Lakewood Center for the
Arts, and Next to Normal at Artist's Repertory Theatre. Onstage
credits include A Year With Frog and Toad and How I Became a
Pirate at Oregon Children's Theatre, and A Very Merry PDX-
Mas and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at
Broadway Rose Theatre Company. He has a B.A. in Music from
St. Olaf College.
Jason Robert Brown wrote The Last Five Years while he was
traveling the country as conductor and musical director for the
national tour of his popular musical, Parade. Though Brown
claims the story is not autobiographical, it can be said that it was
very loosely based on his brief marriage to actress Theresa
O’Neil, who later sued Brown, claiming it too closely resembled
their relationship. Of the reverse chronology used in the show
(as the story begins, Jamie is at the beginning of the relationship
and Cathy is at the end – through inter-cutting scenes, we watch
Jamie move forward in time as Cathy moves backward), Brown
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has said, “it seemed like the perfect way to tell the story, both
because it solved the problem of the audience getting ahead, and
because on a metaphorical level, it said exactly what I wanted
the show to say: these are two people who were never really in
the same place at the same time.”
The Last Five Years has risen to cult fame, capturing hearts and
garnering the kind of fandom that seems to ensure its place in
the musical canon. It all began in 2001 when The Last Five
Years took the stage for its world premiere at the Northlight
Theatre in Skokie, Illinois, starring Lauren Kennedy and Norbert
Leo Butz. Though it ran only two months, the show earned
much critical acclaim and broke box office records.
"Exhilaration, so intense that it brings tears of joy, is at hand in
the premiere of The Last Five Years,” proclaimed the Chicago
Tribune’s senior theater critic Richard Christiansen in his
review. The show sold more tickets in a single weekend than
any other production at that theater, in the company’s then 26-
year history. Time magazine later named it one of the top 10
shows of 2001.
The following year, it headed east for its New York debut, this
time Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre, with Sherie
Rene Scott starring opposite Butz. It earned Drama Desk
Awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics, and the
2002 original cast recording sealed the popularity of the musical.
It was the first cast album released by Sh-K-Boom Records and
remains one of its best-selling albums.
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The success of the cast album and hundreds of regional
productions that followed gradually brought The Last Five Years
to the cult popularity it enjoys today. A massively popular Off-
Broadway revival at Second Stage Theatre in 2013 further
propelled the mania. Directed by Jason Robert Brown himself,
with Betsy Wolfe and Adam Kantor taking on the challenging
roles, the production broke box office records for an Off-
Broadway institution and became the longest running production
in Second Stage’s history. Sh-K-Boom Records captured this
production with a second cast album.
The Last Five Years has enjoyed thousands of productions
worldwide, with hit shows in Australia, Germany, Netherlands,
Italy, France and the Philippines. It has been translated into
several other languages, including Dutch, Japanese, German and
Italian. A feature film is slated to be released soon, starring
Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan (with a cameo by Sherie
Rene Scott). Directed and adapted by Richard LaGravenese, and
produced by Sh-K-Boom Records, the film was shot in just 21
days. Fans are eagerly awaiting its distribution. It is clear the
enthusiasm will only grow for this touching, intimate musical.
Jason Robert Brown
Book, Music and Lyrics
Jason Robert Brown has been hailed as “one of Broadway’s
smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen
Sondheim” (Philadelphia Inquirer), and his “extraordinary,
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jubilant theater music” (Chicago Tribune) has been heard all
over the world, whether in one of the hundreds of productions of
his musicals every year or in his own incendiary live
performances. The New York Times refers to Jason as “a leading
member of a new generation of composers who embody high
hopes for the American musical.” The Bridges of Madison
County, a musical adapted with Marsha Norman from the
bestselling novel, is currently running on Broadway, directed by
Bartlett Sher and starring Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale.
Honeymoon in Vegas, based on Andrew Bergman’s film, opens
on Broadway later this year following a triumphant production
at Paper Mill Playhouse last fall. His major musicals as
composer and lyricist include: 13, written with Robert Horn and
Dan Elish, which began its life in Los Angeles in 2007 and
opened on Broadway in 2008; The Last Five Years, which was
cited as one of Time magazine’s 10 Best of 2001 and won
Drama Desk Awards for Best Music and Best Lyrics; Parade,
written with Alfred Uhry and directed by Harold Prince, which
premiered at Lincoln Center Theatre in 1998, and subsequently
won both the Drama Desk and New York Drama Critics’ Circle
Awards for Best New Musical, as well as garnering Jason the
Tony Award for Original Score; and Songs for a New World, a
theatrical song cycle directed by Daisy Prince, which played
Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been seen in hundreds of
productions around the world. Parade was also the subject of a
major revival directed by Rob Ashford, first at London’s
Donmar Warehouse and then at the Mark Taper Forum in Los
Angeles. His orchestral adaptation of E.B. White’s novel The
Trumpet of the Swan premiered at the Kennedy Center with John
Lithgow and the National Symphony Orchestra, and the CD was
released on PS Classics. Future projects include a new chamber
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musical created with Daisy Prince and Jonathan Marc Sherman
called The Connector, an untitled new piece created with
Claudia Shear and Casey Nicholaw, and a new solo album for
release in 2015. Jason is the winner of the 2002 Kleban Award
for Outstanding Lyrics and the 1996 Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla
Foundation Award for Musical Theatre. Jason’s songs, including
the cabaret standard “Stars and the Moon,” have been performed
and recorded by Audra McDonald, Billy Porter, Betty Buckley,
Karen Akers, Renée Fleming, Philip Quast, Jon Hendricks and
many others, and his song “Someone To Fall Back On” was
featured in the Walden Media film, Bandslam. As a soloist or
with his band The Caucasian Rhythm Kings, Jason has
performed sold-out concerts around the world. His collaboration
with singer Lauren Kennedy, Songs of Jason Robert Brown, is
available on PS Classics. Jason’s piano sonata, Mr. Broadway
was commissioned and premiered by Anthony De Mare at
Carnegie Hall. Jason is also the composer of the incidental
music for David Lindsay-Abaire’s Kimberly Akimbo and Fuddy
Meers, Marsha Norman’s Last Dance, David Marshall Grant’s
Current Events, Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery, and
the Irish Repertory Theater’s production of Long Day’s Journey
Into Night, and he was a Tony Award nominee for his
contributions to the score of Urban Cowboy the
Musical. Additionally, Jason served as the orchestrator and
arranger of Charles Strouse and Lee Adams’s score for a
proposed musical of Star Wars. Jason also took over as musical
director for the Off-Broadway hit When Pigs Fly. Jason has
conducted and created arrangements and orchestrations for Liza
Minnelli, John Pizzarelli, Tovah Feldshuh, and Laurie
Beechman, among many others. Jason studied composition at
the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., with Samuel
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Adler, Christopher Rouse, and Joseph Schwantner. He lives with
his wife, composer Georgia Stitt, and their daughters in New
York City. Jason is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and
the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 & 47.
www.jasonrobertbrown.com
Nancy Keystone
Director Nancy Keystone is a director, playwright, designer and visual
artist, and the honored recipient of a 2011 United States Artists
Hoi Fellowship. In Los Angeles, she is the founder and artistic
director of Critical Mass Performance Group (named 2013's
"Best Theatre Company," by LA Weekly). Their latest piece,
Keystone's adaptation of Alcestis, premiered at the Theatre @
Boston Court and was named one of the "10 Best Plays" by LA
Weekly and LA Stage Times, and won awards for best adaptation
from both LA Drama Critics Circle and Arts in LA. The
company's epic trilogy, Apollo, premiered at PCS in 2009. Also
at PCS she has directed Venus in Fur, The 39 Steps, her
adaptation of Antigone, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dirty
Blonde, Underneath the Lintel and Mike's Incredible Indian
Adventure. She was Artistic Associate at PCS from 2003-2005.
In 2006, with collaborator Peter Maradudin, she was design
consultant for the new Gerding Theatre at the Armory, designing
features for the four lobby spaces. Other theaters at which she
has directed and designed include the Mark Taper Forum,
Theatre @ Boston Court, Actor’s Express, Georgia Shakespeare
Festival, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and Long Beach
Opera. As a visual artist, Ms. Keystone works in mixed media,
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creating paintings and collages, as well as unique scenic
environments for her productions. She is the recipient of TCG’s
Alan Schneider Director Award and many national grants and
fellowships. With Critical Mass Performance Group she is
currently creating Ameryka. www.nancykeystone.com
Rick Lewis
Musical Director Rick’s previous PCS shows are Fiddler on the Roof, Somewhere
in Time, Sweeney Todd (Drammy Award, Musical Director),
Black Pearl Sings!, Oklahoma!, The Huntsmen (JAW), The
Imaginary Invalid, Sunset Boulevard, The 25th Annual Putnam
County Spelling Bee, Ragtime (Drammy Award), Grey Gardens,
A Christmas Carol (Composer), Guys and Dolls (Drammy
Award), Cabaret, West Side Story (Drammy Award), The
Fantasticks and Bat Boy. He is the creator of the hit off-
Broadway musicals The Taffetas, Have a Nice Day!, and The
Cardigans (NYC Bistro Award, "Outstanding Musical
Review”). Rick was musical supervisor for the West Coast
regional premiere of Next to Normal (Artists Repertory Theatre).
He was assistant conductor/vocal director for the pre-Broadway
workshop of Cy Coleman's The Life. Rick has written for Disney
Live Family Entertainment, American Hawaii Cruises,
American West Steamboat Company, American Classic
Voyages and the Portland Spirit (Cinnamon Bear Cruise). Rick
is a private vocal coach, concentrating on musical theater
audition and performance. www.rlewismusic.com
Daniel Meeker
Scenic and Lighting Designer
Previously at PCS, Dan designed the set for The People's
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Republic of Portland and Red (Drammy Award), the lighting
for Twist Your Dickens and I Love to Eat, and the set and
lighting for Bo-Nita, The Mountaintop, The Real
Americans and Mike's Incredible Indian Adventure. Other recent
credits include lighting design for the Pickathon Festival;
lighting design for Crooked at COHO; lighting design for
Disconnect at San Jose Repertory Theatre; set and lighting
design for The Light in the Piazza, Detroit, Mother Teresa is
Dead, The Huntsmen and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at
Portland Playhouse and set design for The Stinky Cheese
Man for Oregon Children's Theatre. Upcoming projects
include LIZZIE here at PCS, Fancy Nancy for Oregon Children's
Theatre, a world premiere dance piece for White Wave dance at
The Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and another
Pickathon Festival. Daniel is a member of the faculty of
Portland State University. He is a graduate of Ithaca College and
the Yale School of Drama and a member of United Scenic
Artists.
Jeff Cone
Costume Designer
This is Jeff’s 16th season at PCS. In that time he has designed
costumes for over 75 productions. Of those shows, 50 have been
in the last eight seasons at the Armory. Favorite productions
include West Side Story, Cabaret, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39
Steps, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Sometimes a Great
Notion, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Imaginary Invalid, Black
Pearl Sings!, Venus in Fur and Clybourne Park. Jeff received
Drammy Awards for his costume designs for Dirty Blonde, Act
A Lady and Shakespeare’s Amazing Cymbeline. In addition to
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his resident costume designer duties, Jeff is happy to manage the
costume shop here at Portland Center Stage.
Casi Pacilio
Sound Designer
Casi keeps busy with a variety of work and play in Portland and
around the country. PCS credits include Othello, A Small Fire,
Chinglish, Twist Your Dickens, The Mountaintop, Fiddler on the
Roof, Oklahoma!, The North Plan, Shakespeare’s Amazing
Cymbeline, Black Pearl Sings!, Opus, futura (with composer
Jana Losey), Ragtime (PAMTA Award 2010), The 25th Annual
Putnam County Spelling Bee, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps,
Snow Falling on Cedars, Crazy Enough, The Little Dog
Laughed, Sometimes a Great Notion, Cabaret, The Pillowman, I
Am My Own Wife, West Side Story, Celebrity Row and eight
seasons of JAW. National shows: Holcombe Waller Surfacing
and Wayfinders; Hand2Mouth Theatre credits: Left Hand of
Darkness, My Mind is Like an Open Meadow (Drammy Award
2011), Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart and PEP TALK.
Other theatrical credits include Squonk Opera’s
Bigsmorgasbord-WunderWerk (Broadway, PS122, national and
international touring); I Am My Own Wife, I Think I Like Girls
(La Jolla Playhouse); Playland, 10 Fingers and Lips Together,
Teeth Apart (City Theatre, PA). Film credits include Creation of
Destiny, Out of Our Time and A Powerful Thang. Recordings:
Glitterfruit’s fruit snacks.
Kelsey Daye Lutz
Stage Manager
Kelsey Daye is a North Carolinian dairy farmer’s daughter. New
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York credits include off-Broadway work with The Actors
Company Theatre; off-off-Broadway work with Theatre for the
New City and The Internationalists. Regional credits include:
stage manager for A Small Fire, production assistant
for: Clybourne Park, Venus in Fur, Midsummer Night’s Dream,
The North Plan and Anna Karenina at PCS; stage management
intern for Hard Weather Boating Party, Shipwrecked, A Raisin
in the Sun and 43 Plays for 43 Presidents at Actors Theatre of
Louisville; and assistant stage manager for A Beautiful
Star and A Christmas Carol at Triad Stage. She would like to
thank her boys for all their unconditional love.
Chris Coleman
Artistic Director
Chris joined Portland Center Stage as artistic director in May
2000. Before coming to Portland, he was artistic director at
Actor’s Express in Atlanta, a company he co-founded in the
basement of an old church in 1988. Favorite PCS directing
assignments include Fiddler on the Roof, Clybourne Park,
Sweeney Todd, Shakespeare’s Amazing Cymbeline (which he
also adapted), Anna Karenina, Oklahoma!, Snow Falling on
Cedars, Ragtime, Crazy Enough, Beard of Avon, Cabaret, King
Lear, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Man and Superman, Outrage,
Flesh and Blood and The Devils. Chris has directed at theaters
across the country, including Actor’s Theater of Louisville,
Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT-Seattle, The Alliance, Dallas
Theatre Center, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, New York Theatre
Workshop and Center Stage in Baltimore. A native Atlantan,
Chris holds a B.F.A. from Baylor University and an M.F.A.
from Carnegie Mellon. He is currently the board president for
the Cultural Advocacy Coalition. Chris’ favorite things about
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Portland: farmers markets, Timbers games, Salt & Straw ice
cream, dog parks, food carts and cars that stop for pedestrians.
Music Theatre International Music Theatre International (MTI) is one of the world's leading
theatrical licensing agencies, granting schools as well as amateur
and professional theatres from around the world the rights to
perform the largest selection of great musicals from Broadway
and beyond. MTI works directly with the composers, lyricists
and book writers of these shows to provide official scripts,
musical materials and dynamic theatrical resources to over
60,000 theatrical organizations in the US and in over 60
countries worldwide.
Downtown Development Group
Downtown Development Group cares about our valued tenants,
our dedicated employees and our amazing community in which
we reside.
We know that the arts are critical to a vibrant community. We
value the daily impact that our thriving local arts organizations
make on each one of us, our businesses and our community as a
whole. That’s one reason why Downtown Development
Group feels strongly about the unexpected, challenging, and
engaging work at Portland Center
Stage.
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Enjoy The Last Five Years.
Viridian Reclaimed Wood
The stunning stage floor was chosen specifically for this
production to accent the passage of time and consistent nature of
our surroundings. The wood began its life as bleachers for The
Dalles High School over 50 years ago, and it was rescued by
Viridian Reclaimed Wood during a recent gym remodel.
Viridian upcycles reclaimed wood materials into flooring,
paneling and tables of unparalleled character. Over half a
century of countless pep rallies, assemblies and rowdy fans took
their toll on this wood, but Viridian carefully refurbished the
bleachers into the amazing stage you see before you. In case
you are wondering, the wood does not end its life once the show
closes. Viridian will reclaim this wood once again and will use
the high-end, high quality wood for floors and walls around
Portland. To learn more about Viridians’ philosophy and
products please visit them at: www.viridianwood.com
ZGF Architects
In The Last Five Years, Jason Robert Brown propels his
characters in opposite directions through time, love, and loss.
One moves forward chronologically, while the other travels
backward through time. As designers of the built environment,
ZGF Architects also uses an innovative and sometimes nonlinear
approach, always catering the design process to best serve the
needs of the client, community, and project. We celebrate the
unique perspectives PCS brings to its productions and the voice
it provides to shaping our cultural landscape.
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