[NEohioPAL] PRESS RELEASE: "The Last Five Years" at CVLT is an intimate relationship musical

[Chagrin Valley Little Theatre]

  *PRESS RELEASE*
  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Date: 10-14-10

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact: Andrew Rothman
From: Chagrin Valley Little Theatre

40 River Street
Chagrin Falls, OH 44122
Phone: 440-247-8955
E-mail: cvlt at cvlt.org <mailto:cvlt at cvlt.org>
Website: www.cvlt.org <http://www.cvlt.org/>


        HIGH-RESOLUTION PRESS PHOTO AVAILABLE AT: www.CVLT.org/promo
        <http://www.cvlt.org/promo>


    "The Last Five Years" at CVLT is an intimate relationship musical

CHAGRIN FALLS, OH - Real-world relationships are rarely as black and 
white as the classic Broadway musicals tend to paint them. Tough 
circumstances, poor communication, and low self-esteem can often tear 
even the most promising couples apart. Jason Robert Brown, the Tony 
Award-winner behind the musicals /Parade/, /Songs for a New World/, 
/Urban Cowboy/ and /13/, brings this sort of complex and visceral view 
of the modern couple to the stage in /The Last Five Years/. Debuting in 
early 2001, this intimate two-actor musical has been produced around the 
world, and will have just completed an extremely popular extended run in 
London when Chagrin Valley Little Theatre's staging of it opens on 
October 29th.

In /The Last Five Years/, Andrew Rothman (CVLT, Kennedy's at Playhouse 
Square, Weathervane Playhouse, Rabbit Run) plays Jamie Wellerstein, an 
up-and-coming novelist who left Columbia University to pursue his 
literary career in New York. Rebecca Marks (Opera Cleveland, Cleveland 
Playhouse, Hanna Theater, Great Lakes Theater Festival, Beck Center, 
Weathervane Playhouse) plays Cathy Hiatt, a struggling stage actress 
from New Jersey. As Jamie's writing takes him to new horizons, Cathy 
strives to break out of summer stock and into Broadway. The plot is, at 
face value, straightforward; Jewish boy meets Catholic girl, they fall 
in love, marry, and eventually fall to pieces.

However, Jason Robert Brown lays out the story through an unusual 
twisting of the time line, in which Cathy tells her side of the 
relationship starting with the post-mortem, while Jamie begins his 
telling of the story with the first date. The two characters move in 
opposite directions through time, alternating dovetailed solo musical 
performances, punctuated by scant dialogue, and only meet to sing as a 
duo at their engagement and wedding in the middle of the tale. This 
unique bidirectional storytelling style allows Mr. Brown to balance the 
soaring highs of fresh love with the crushing lows of the breakup via 
fifteen original songs in varying styles, accompanied by Dan 
Kamionkowski at the piano.

At the helm is director Jacqi Loewy, who has staged /The Last Five 
Years/ twice before; most recently at TrueNorth Cultural Arts in January 
2010, and in 2006 at Akron's Weathervane Playhouse (a production which 
also featured Mr. Rothman in the role of 'Jamie'). A full-time professor 
of theatre/communication at Notre Dame College, and current Board 
President of the Cleveland Theater Collective, Jacqi has over a decade 
of Cleveland theatre credits. She has directed at The Cleveland Play 
House, Ensemble, Dobama, CASE, Charenton, Playhouse Square and Cleveland 
Public Theatre, and appeared on stage everywhere from Broadway to most 
Cleveland venues, including leading roles at Playhouse Square, Dobama, 
Charenton and Mercury Summer Stock. Jacqi had the privilege of 
supervising all three years of /Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding/, the 
longest-running show in Cleveland's history.

/The Last Five Years/, which is performed without intermission, is 
staged at CVLT's River Street Playhouse, across the parking lot from the 
theatre's main building at 40 River Street in Chagrin Falls. This venue 
seats roughly one quarter the audience of its larger sibling, making it 
well-suited to the immediacy of this small-scale production. The show 
begins on the closing weekend of the drama /Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/ on 
CVLT's main stage, and is followed on the River Street stage by the 
comedy /Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy with a (somewhat) Happy Ending/ 
in November.

/The Last Five Years /runs Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 PM, October 
29 - November 13. Tickets are $10 general admission, and are available 
at www.CVLT.org, or by phone at 440-247-8955, Monday through Saturday 
from 1-6 PM. Complete details on CVLT's 81st Season and dinner packages 
with local restaurants are available online at www.CVLT.org. The theater 
is located at 56 River Street in historic Chagrin Falls Village.

Chagrin Valley Little Theatre is generously funded by Cuyahoga County 
residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and is supported by the Ohio 
Arts Council.

###


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20101014/f6e1c4fb/attachment-0003.htm>