"The Last Five Years" 16 Years In

Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is a sturdy and stubborn piece whose charms and problems persist from the Northlight premiere in 2001 to Camelot Theatre's current production.

Chris Jones's Variety critique of The Last Five Years' world premiere praises the emotional range of the score, but finds fault with the underdeveloped characters. Change the names of the artists involved, and he could almost have been writing about Camelot's revival.

The Last Five Years follows the birth, life and demise of Jamie (Nathan Monks) and Catherine's (Amanda Andersen) five year love affair. It follows Jamie's story chronologically, and Catherine's in reverse chronology: his arc begins with the first blush of love, and hers with reading his "Dear John" letter. For the most part, the musical is structured around solo numbers, with duets when their stories intersect during the wedding.

Livia Genise, artistic director of Camelot and director of this production, writes in her program note that she chose this particular play because "...it resonates with me. We all go into a love relationship, any relationship really, with all the naiveté and hope that make us who we are. And once you 'open your heart, one stitch at a time,' you may get hurt. But one thing is sure; you are never quite the same person again. And sometimes, that's a good thing." To paraphrase, she chose this text because the story resonates with her. In spite of that, her production deemphasizes narrative in favor of music. And maybe that's a good thing. The Last Five Years has an exciting score, into which both Monks and violinist Beth Martin are particularly successful at sinking their teeth and horsehairs, respectively. Genise thinks that this play asks "who is responsible for the relationship not working?" and that her "audience will ultimately decide based on whose story resonates with them the most." I contend, and Variety's Jones seems to agree with me here, that The Last Five Years is not open to such a Rashomon-esque reading: our sympathies are clearly meant to rest with Jamie. By structuring Jamie's story chronologically, we can follow his logic as to why he feels a relationship we're told at the outset is doomed is a good idea. Catherine does not have that benefit. By making a Jamie a successful novelist and Catherine a struggling actress who is, it's implied, jealous of his success, Catherine is too easy to read as a nagging wife and deuteragonist in her man's story. She's too hard to read as a protagonist. A marked difference in singing abilities between Monks and Andersen only serves to highlight these textual problems. In fact, and I'll go back to Jones' critique of the Northlight premiere again, Brown's created relationship reads as a little sexist. In short, The Last Five Year's songs are good and its story's not, and it's been that way for the last 16 years.

Camelot Theatre's production reproduces the qualities and failings of The Last Five Year's world premiere verbatim, suggesting that these are not brought to the script by any particular theater, but in fact hardwired into the play's DNA. The music's good enough, though, that audiences continue to be willing to forgive the story. Thus, the real danger with this play, though, lies in artistic directors like Genise with whom the story actually resonates. Thankfully, Genise deemphasized narrative in her production by playing fast and loose with temporal landmarks: there's only one projected on the scrim after the first number. By relying on her established musical taste and musical background, Genise emphasized the part of The Last Five Years that works and deemphasized the part that doesn't.

Producing a Gay Minstrel Show

https://www.camelottheatre.org/2014/producers.html

According to Theatre in America: Appraisal and Challenge, community theater is the most popularly accessible theatrical venue, but all too often settles for being a "diversion" or social gathering place, drifting away from the idea of theater as art. Camelot Theatre's current production of The Producers limits Camelot's accessibility not only by eschewing professionalism, but also by creating an exclusionary environment with clumsily homophobic jokes.

Camelot has seen great success with its Spotlight series, biographic pieces about historical pop singers that feature "a little bit of story and a lot of music." Unfortunately, that formula doesn't work for The Producers. Brooks uses Leo Bloom's character arch to soften the blow of his homophobic minstrelsy. That story is lost in amateurish acting and directing that pulls the punch that would legitimize this production as communally inclusive art.

The story's about Leo Bloom (Peter Wickliffe), and his journey to self-realization by forsaking his hellish job as an accountant for the fantasies of male virility offered by Broadway production. Max Bialystock (David King-Gabriel), the lately unfashionable Jewish producer, ushers him into this new life of tax fraud and buxom Swedish secretaries (Kelly Jean Hammond as Ulla). They license a neo-Nazi musical for their scheme to create a lucrative flog, and hire the worst director in town, the gay Roger DeBris (Don Matthews), only to see their fraud go up in flames when people love the play. Leo and Ulla skip town, letting Max take the fall, before returning for the reconciliatory "'Til Him."

That whole story hinges on Leo's journey. First he's a repressed accountant. Then he realizes his male virility with Broadway production and sex. But then he finds something else - love for Max. That's the story that needs to be told to make this compelling theater. But the story we see is "Leo's weirded out by Jews. Leo's weirded out by Nazis. Leo's weirded out by gays. Leo's weirded out by women." All of this, of course, is true initially, but the story ought to be about how Leo overcomes his prejudices. However, Leo doesn't get past this due to Wickliffe mugging his way through what ought to be a fraught journey, and director Livia Genise focuses on gay stereotypes (drag queens, the Village People, etc.). Most of this heteronormative prejudice can be chalked up to Brooksian satire (even though a straight man parodying the gays is suspect). But Brooks does soften the blow with a love song by a man for a man at the end of the play:          

"No one ever made me feel like someone

'Til him.

Life was really nothing but a glum one

'Til him.

My existence bordered on the tragic,

Always timid, never took a chance.

Then I felt his magic and my heart began to dance."

If you don't play this as "I came back because I love you," then the depictions of homosexuality in the play are all heavy-handed caricatures, and Leo's journey stops at becoming an alpha male like Max was. If you play it as a love song, then Leo's journey continues into the realization that he's bisexual. If you want a theater that includes the whole community, and not just the heterosexual mainstream, then just guess which story you want to tell.

Community theater not only needs to cultivate professionalism, but also to create a safe space for the whole community. The first means developing the technique to tell a compelling story, and the second means telling stories that embrace an inclusive world view. Camelot's The Producers is a good example of how not to do that. Instead of the courageous story about a young man realizing himself as a producer and bisexual, this Producers is simply a gay minstrel show.

Spotlight on the USO

This Thursday, Camelot Theatre premiered its new show, Spotlight on the USO. Camelot’s Spotlights are a recent innovation that, to paraphrase Artistic Director Livia Genise, feature “a little story and a lot of music.” This particular show is a deviation from previous Spotlights in that it doesn’t present the biography of an individual artist through music, but rather that of an artistic organization – the USO.

But I’ll come to all that later, because really the show Thursday night was a captivating 40s and 50s jazz concert by the Southern Oregon Jazz Orchestra. They played two sets of songs that I suppose were played for the service people overseas during the 40s and 50s, but that story was only secondary to what they were doing. They did branch out from their usual fare twice, both in the second set after intermission – once to give an example of the country music that started to appear in USO tours in the second half of last century with “Route 66”, and their final number was a medley of songs from the branches of the armed forces during which narrator Shirley Patton invited veterans of each branch to stand and be recognized during their song.

The meat and bones of the concert, though, were 40s and 50s jazz standards, and were they ever a hit! They had the audience singing along with “Minnie the Moocher” and others, and nearly every soloist got a rousing applause when they sat back down. Dianne Strong, a singer, was the featured soloist of the evening. An alto, she has a powerful focal and stage presence while she stays within her range. And when she takes short-note forays above her comfortable range, she’s riveting! But she certainly should not try to hold those higher notes – her attempt in “I’ve Got You under My Skin” was acoustically uncomfortable. While I’m pointing out weaknesses, the trumpet and saxophone sections could probably use a tune-up for “American Patrol,” but besides those two mistakes the concert was certainly a good night out.

Now let’s move on to the story part of the “little bit of story and a lot of music” equation. Peter Wyckliffe wrote the script, and Shirley Patton said it. Wyckliffe has certainly done his homework and has written a feast of information. This feast, however, lacks consistency: it ranges from history lesson with facts and figures to penetrating insights into what the USO was all about. The USO was and is meant to help the troops stay connected to home, and Wyckliffe illustrates that beautifully with a verbal illustration of the phones and letters and how they were and are often the only way the troops have to connect back to their families and loved ones.

The result of the inconsistent nature of Wyckliffe’s script is that it sinks or swims with the actor saying it, and it did both with narrator Shirley Patton. She got off to a slow start, and it definitely came off as a fairly dry history lesson. After she got into her groove, she came across as more grandmotherly and inviting. But she was always reading the script, and that was always a distraction. I suggest that a script is not necessary: the role of the narrator in this particular Spotlight was that of an MC. Some kind of structural outline that the performer can do from memory is what this part called for, but a word-for-word script is a death-trap. It makes the storytelling seem artificial, and Patton’s mixing up the U.S. Navy and Air Force songs when asking veterans from the different branches to stand at the end didn’t help.

While I’m on about inconsistencies, I have to take issue with the use of projections and backlighting. Designers Bart Grady and Brian O’Connor had three different things going on: pictures of the USO from the 40s and 50s up through the 80s and 90s, cool blue and purple washes, and a warm orange wash. The pictures were my favorite – they set the location for the story that Wyckliffe and Patton were telling. The cool washes gave an atmosphere of a smoky jazz bar and fit in a more general way for the orchestra, but not for the story. Orange is jarring color, but I probably would have forgotten about it if it had remained there the whole time. But the seemingly arbitrary shifts between images, cool washes and orange were, frankly, distracting.

That said, these weak points fall outside the crux of the show: the Southern Oregon Jazz Orchestra and their 40s and 50s jazz standards. If that’s your kind of music (and even if it’s not) it’s worth a listen. But if you’re going for the story of the USO, that part of the show has a few wrinkles it needs to iron out before I can walk away satisfied.

Spotlight on the USO is playing at Camelot Theatre, 101 Talent Ave., Talent, Oregon 97540 from January 12-22. Their box office can be reached at 541-535-5250. Tickets are $22, plus $2 for reserved seating.