Will you share your life with them for the next 10 minutes? Nick Jonas and Tony Award winner Adrienne Warren are set to star in the first-ever Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, with 2024 Tony nominee Whitney White at the helm. The musical will play a 14-week limited engagement in spring 2025, in a theatre to be announced.
The Last Five Years follows two New Yorkers, rising author Jamie (played by Jonas) and aspiring actress Cathy (Warren), as they fall in and out of love over the course of five years.
The musical premiered at Northlight Theatre in Skokie, Illinois, then opened Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in 2002, starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. A film adaptation directed by Richard LaGravenese was released in 2014, with Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick starring. A favorite among musical theatre fans, this production will be The Last Five Years' long awaited debut on Broadway.
“The Last Five Years is one of the greatest original American musicals in the canon. I could not be more excited to bring it to Broadway for the first time with Nick and Adrienne, two powerhouse performers and lovers of theatre," White said in a statement. “I fell in love with this musical many years ago when I was a student at Northwestern. I found it then, and still consider The Last Five Years to be such a human portrait and a beautiful exercise in making time—the one thing we are all bound to—feel consequential. The songs are iconic, and the vibes are very 2000-and-now because this is a story about artists falling in and out of love and what happens when something has to come to an end. There is no place in the world that can rip people apart and bring them together like New York City. I think we all understand how hard it is to leave something behind; a lover, a job, a country, a relationship that doesn't serve you anymore. But for me, the heartbreak at the center of the show walks hand in hand with abundant love and possibility. I know that audiences will be blown away, once again, by the brilliance of Jason Robert Brown's one-of-a-kind composition, orchestration and musical vision, and that they will see themselves in Jamie and Cathy—two young people trying to figure it all out.”
Added Brown in a statement: “On June 15, 1999, I wrote the first song of a new project. It was the first time I had started a project without knowing where it was going to end up, without a producer or collaborators, just me very much on my own needing to find the music and words that would tell a story that was twisting my heart into impossible shapes every day. For 25 years, I have let The Last Five Years lead me on its journey, through our very first production in Skokie in 2001 to our Off-Broadway premiere a year later, a thrilling film version, a record-breaking revival at Second Stage, and thousands of productions spanning every continent. I have always believed that when the time was right, The Last Five Years would make its way to Broadway. To have Nick and Adrienne taking on these roles is a composer’s dream come true, and to have Whitney’s extraordinary guidance and vision is the hope of every playwright. It has taken 25 years, but the time is right.”
Seaview, Ambassador Theatre Group, and The Season are producing the Broadway run.
Visit TheLastFiveYearsBroadway.com.
