After her electrifying Evita, Rachel Zegler is back at the Palladium – although not on its balcony – joining Ben Platt for a 25th-anniversary concert of Jason Robert Brown’s two-hander. A few nights earlier, Lily Allen was on this stage performing her blistering broadside West End Girl, about love turned sour. The Last Five Years has an equitable approach to its own curdled marriage as a couple give their perspectives through alternating solos. Its masterstroke is to have one of them chart the story in reverse, beginning wearily post-breakup, while the other goes chronologically from first infatuation. Halfway through they duet at their wedding.
Brown directs and conducts from the piano on a set by Bretta Gerecke that separates out the band on to various levels, with central staircases, evoking the apartments and urban spaces where the story unfolds. Novelist Jamie (Platt) and actor Cathy (Zegler) enter from opposite sides and meet in the middle for an embrace, foreshadowing the show’s midway union. Platt retreats, to a plangent string accompaniment, and Zegler sings her stark opener, Still Hurting, staring at the way he went. Absences are accentuated throughout the semi-staged production and Zegler painfully captures the frustration of a partner whose unfinished business goes unheard by a departed ex.
