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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.