Libretto copyright © 2011 by Jason Robert Brown
Music and lyrics copyright © 2002 by Semolina Farfalle Music
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.
Published in 2011 by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books
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All photographs © Joan Marcus
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Mark Lerner
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Jason Robert.
[Last 5 years. Libretto]
The last five years: the complete book and lyrics of the musical / book, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown.
p. cm.
9781476850573
1. Musicals--Librettos. I. Title.
MLS0.B878L372011
782.1’40268--dc22
2011007610
www.applausepub.com
Table of Contents
Scene 1 Still Hurting
Scene 2 Shiksa Goddess
Scene 3 See I’m Smiling
Scene 4 Moving Too Fast
Scene 5 A Part Of That
Scene 6 The Schmuel Song
Scene 7 A Summer In Ohio
Scene 8 The Next Ten Minutes
Scene 9 A Miracle Would Happen
Scene 10 Climbing Uphill
Scene 11 If I Didn’t Believe In You
Scene 12 I Can Do Better Than That
Scene 13 Nobody Needs To Know
Scene 14 Goodbye Until Tomorrow/ I Could Never Rescue You
PREFACE
I was walking to Lincoln Center Theater from my apartment on West 94th Street and I had no idea what I was going to say at the meeting. Thomas Cott had invited me to his office to talk about a commission for my next play, and he was expecting me to tell him about it. As I crossed 69th Street, an idea wandered gingerly into my mind, and luckily, I knew enough to grab on to it. By the time I walked three more blocks to Tom’s office, I had sketched out the entire structure of The Last Five Years.
The less grandiose version is that I knew a couple of things before I started walking. Six months before, my musical Parade had opened at Lincoln Center Theater after four brutally hard (if thrilling) years of writing; and then it closed there less than three months later. I was determined that my next piece would be different from Parade in two important respects: first, I wanted it to be small in scale-two actors, so that it could be performed in any size theater, or even a concert hall or cabaret; and second, I wanted the songs to feel like, well, songs-one person having a complete musical moment, like a track on an album, without needing dialogue to tell the story. But who were these two people and what were they singing about? And if each song was essentially going to be a solo, then how did they interact?
The idea of writing a love story came simply enough; it seemed natural for a man and a woman to share the stage and tell the story of their relationship. But then I realized that if they were telling that story, then the relationship must be over. That explained why they weren’t both singing at the same time. How to tell that story, though, without the piece becoming more and more relentlessly depressing as the evening went on? Wouldn’t the whole second half of the show be nothing but morbid ballads?
That’s when I hit 69th Street. What occurred to me was that She (whoever she was) had to start at the end of the relationship, and He (whoever he was) had to start at the beginning. And over the course of the evening, their timelines would completely cross, so that the show ended with him saying goodbye and her on the first date. That middle point, I realized, had to be their wedding, the one and only moment in the show when they would both be in the same moment onstage at the same time.
It’s a peculiar truth that when I was coming up with all this on my walk, I wasn’t thinking about my own life at all. Even though I was at that very moment embroiled in a terribly sad and bitter divorce, it didn’t occur to me that the travails of this fictional couple I was choosing to create might end up overlapping substantially with the facts of my own first marriage. I even wrote the first song of the show without knowing specifically who these characters were—that song, “Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You,” is still in the show, more or less unchanged from what I wrote on June 15, 1999.
For the most part, I wrote the show from the outside in, always knowing that the wedding would be the last thing I wrote. (Turned out it wasn’t.) In the course of bringing Jamie and Cathy to life, I felt myself exorcising the demons of my marriage, and certain clearly discernible facets of my and my ex-wife’s personalities crept into these characters. It felt important to me to let those things be part of the writing-so much of the process of getting divorced seemed to be focused on blame and anger and money, and yet writing this show was about having faith that two people who loved each other could do the wrong things for the right reasons.
The Last Five Years changed my life in a great many ways. As a writer, the intensity and compactness of the form really forced me to strip my music and lyrics down to their essence—I feel like my work before The Last Five Years is occasionally gimmicky “tricky,” but I knew I couldn’t get away with that on this show. In a way, it’s my first grown-up piece. And personally, the process of experiencing the full arc of my marriage through a writer’s eyes was considerably valuable in helping me heal, allowing me to close that chapter of my life with a sense of equanimity and move on to a wiser, more honest understanding of who I was and what I wanted a marriage and a family to be.
I’m grateful to discover that the show isn’t really mine anymore. When the show is performed in Arkansas, in Mexico, in Korea, the audiences there aren’t watching a thinly veiled version of me; they’re watching Jamie and Cathy, and they’re connecting to their struggle to love each other and find their own way as artists and people. Over the course of the decade, Jamie and Cathy have stood in for countless members of those audiences, and I hope they have given them the same comfort and closure that they gave me. I think they’re good kids, you know. They made some mistakes, but they made them because they believed that loving each other was going to fix any problem that came along. It didn’t, it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have tried.
—Jason Robert Brown
Los Angeles, California
February 2011
The Last Five Years was first presented by Northlight Theatre (B.J. Jones, artistic director, Richard Friedman, executive director) at the North Shore Center for the Performing A
rts, Skokie, Illinois, on May 23, 2001. Set and costumes by Beowulf Boritt, lighting by Christine Binder, sound by Rob Milburn and Ray Nardelli, casting by Mark Simon, musical direction by Thomas Murray, and direction by Daisy Prince. The cast was as follows:
JAMIE WELLERSTEIN Norbert Leo Butz
CATHERINE HIATT Lauren Kennedy
The stage manager was Patty Lyons.
The first New York production was presented by Marty Bell and Arielle Tepper, in association with Libby Adler Mages/Mari Glick and Rose/Land Productions, at the Minetta Lane Theater on February 11, 2002. The designers were the same as the Chicago production, except the sound designer, Duncan Edwards. The role of CATHERINE was played by Sherie Rene Scott.
SCENE 1
STILL HURTING
New York City at the end of the twentieth century. CATHERINE is discovered. She wears a wedding ring. She is turning an object over and over in her hand—it is a man’s wedding ring that matches hers. There is a note written on a yellow pad on the table—she has read it a number of times.
CATHERINE
Jamie is over and Jamie is gone.
Jamie’s decided it’s time to move on.
Jamie has new dreams he’s building upon,
And I’m still hurting.
Jamie arrived at the end of the line.
Jamie’s convinced that the problems are mine.
Jamie is probably feeling just fine,
And I’m still hurting.
What about lies, Jamie?
What about things
That you swore to be true?
What about you, Jamie?
What about you?
Jamie is sure something wonderful died.
Jamie decides it’s his right to decide.
Jamie’s got secrets he doesn’t confide,
And I’m still hurting.
Go and hide and run away!
Run away, run and find something better!
Go and ride the sun away!
Run away, like it’s simple,
Like it’s right. . .
JAMIE enters—he’s not wearing a wedding ring. CATHERINE does not see him. It is five years earlier than the scene in CATHERINE ’s room— JAMIE is at the beginning of the relationship, and CATHERINE, across the stage, is at the end.
Give me a day, Jamie!
Bring back the lies,
Hang them back on the wall!
Maybe I’d see
How you could be
So certain that we
Had no chance at all.
Jamie is over and where can I turn?
Covered with scars I did nothing to earn?
Maybe there’s somewhere a lesson to learn,
But that wouldn’t change the fact,
That wouldn’t speed the time,
Once the foundation’s cracked
And I’m
Still hurting.
The lights fade out on her and become stronger on JAMIE across the stage.
SCENE 2
SHIKSA GODDESS
JAMIE is saying goodbye to CATHERINE at the end of their first date.
JAMIE
I’m breaking my mother’s heart.
The longer I stand looking at you,
The more I hear it splinter and crack
From ninety miles away.
I’m breaking my mother’s heart.
The JCC of Spring Valley is shaking
And crumbling to the ground,
And my grandfather’s rolling,
Rolling in his grave.
If you had a tattoo, that wouldn’t matter.
If you had a shaved head, that would be cool.
If you came from Spain or Japan
Or the back of a van—
Just as long as you’re not from Hebrew school—
I’d say, “Now I’m getting somewhere!
I’m finally breaking through!”
I’d say, “Hey! Hey! Shiksa goddess!
I’ve been waiting for someone like you.”
A couple of days later. JAMIE is on the phone with CATHERINE.
I’ve been waiting through Danica Schwartz and Erica Weiss
And the Handelman twins.
I’ve been waiting through Heather Greenblatt, Annie Mincus,
Karen Pincus, and Lisa Katz.
And Stacy Rosen, Ellen Kaplan, Julie Silber, and Janie Stein.
I’ve had Shabbas dinners on Friday nights
With every Shapiro in Washington Heights,
But the minute I first met you
I could barely catch my breath.
I’ve been standing for days with the phone in my hand,
Like an idiot, scared to death.
I’ve been wand’ring through the desert!
I’ve been beaten, I’ve been hit!
My people have suffered for thousands of years
And I don’t give a shit!
If you had a pierced tongue, that wouldn’t matter.
If you once were in jail or you once were a man,
If your mother and your brother had “relations” with each other
And your father was connected to the Gotti clan,
I’d say, “Well, nobody’s perfect!”
It’s tragic but it’s true.
I’d say, “Hey! Hey! Shiksa goddess!
I’ve been waiting for someone like. . .”
He hangs up the phone—maybe they are walking together through the park.
You, breaking the circle,
You, taking the light.
You, you are the story I should write—
I have to write!
If you drove an R.V., that wouldn’t matter!
If you like to drink blood, I think it’s cute.
If you’ve got a powerful connection to your firearm collection,
I say, Draw a bead and shoot!
I’m your Hebrew slave, at your service!
Just tell me what to do!
I say, Hey, hey, hey, hey!
I’ve been waiting for someone,
I’ve been praying for someone,
I think that I could be in love with someone
Like you!
Blackout.
SCENE 3
SEE I’M SMILING
Three months before Scene 1. CATHERINE is sitting at the end of a pier by the river in Ohio—JAMIE has come, somewhat unexpectedly, for a visit. Over her dress she wears a sweater that’s a little too small and not the right color.
CATHERINE
I guess I can’t believe you really came
And that we’re sitting on this pier.
See, I’m smiling—
That means I’m happy that you’re here.
I stole this sweater from the costume shop—
It makes me look like Daisy Mae.
See, we’re laughing—
I think we’re gonna be okay.
I mean, we’ll have to try a little harder
And bend things to and fro
To make this love as special
As it was five years ago.
I mean, you made it to Ohio!
Who knows where else we can go?
I think you’re really gonna like this show.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t suck.
See, you’re laughing, and I’m smiling,
By a river in Ohio
And you’re mine. . .
We’re doing fine.
Five years earlier, just after their first date—Lights up on JAMIE, on the phone in his studio apartment, a little nervous, calling a literary agent.
JAMIE Hi, I’m calling for Ms. Whitfield. Yeah, my name is Jamie Wellerstein, and my professor at Columbia said he had called and. . . Yeah, Dr. Adler. Right. Oh, yeah, I mean, it’s just a draft, but I think it’s, you know, getting to. . . whatever. Well, look, I don’t know from agents, Dr. Adler just suggested. . . Okay. Should I drop it off in person or. . . Um, yeah, I’ll drop it in the mail then, that’s great. No, that’s great, thank you. What’s your add
ress?
Lights down on JAMIE.
CATHERINE
I think we both can see what could be better—
I’ll own when I was wrong.
With all we’ve had to go through,
We’ll end up twice as strong.
And so we’ll start again this weekend,
And just keep rolling along. . .
Her face falls—JAMIE has just told her he’ll be leaving tomorrow.
I didn’t know you had to go so soon.
I thought we had a little time. . .
Look, whatever, if you have to,
Then you have to, so whatever.
It’s all right—
We’ll have tonight.
Back to JAMIE, a couple of weeks later. Lights up as he picks up the phone.
JAMIE Hello? This is. Oh, Ms. Whitfield, it’s a pleasure to hear from you. And a surprise. Oh, you read it. Great, that’s. . . Thank you so much, that means a lot to me. Yes, I really am twenty-three. Sure, whenever is convenient. Tuesday, good, nine o’clock, I’m there. I’m really looking forward to meeting you, Ms. Whitfield. Okay, Linda, thank you. Thank you, this is great.
Lights down as he hangs up.
CATHERINE
You know what makes me crazy?
The Last Five Years Page 1