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The Last Five Years is celebrating 25 years since its premiere in Chicago. Composer Jason Robert Brown took to social media to share a video celebrating the show, and many of the cast members who have starred in it over the years.
“There’s been no way to explain to you what this last month has been like, because if you’ve been there with me for the last quarter-century then you understand, and if you haven’t, you couldn’t possibly,” Brown writes. “And so I asked my beleaguered assistant Kat Cartusciello to help me put this little piece together to try to make some kind of sense of this experience.”
“Here’s a very small sample of my last twenty-five years with this show, featuring pieces of all the major productions I’ve been part of (my deepest apologies to Lara Pulver, who played Cathy in the 2006 London premiere but managed to escape the bootleggers so I have no record of it!), as well as some performances by very close friends of mine that I feel have kept this show alive all this time.”
The video features Cynthia Erivo, Anika Noni Rose, Shoshana Bean, Betsy Wolfe, Samantha Barks, Ariana Grande, Rachel Zegler, and more, performing the song “Still Hurting.” Check out the video here.
The live recording of Tony Award-winner Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years (25th Anniversary Live at the London Palladium), featuring Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler, is now available. The album can be found on all digital platforms HERE. The album was captured live during the limited, sold-out concert residency at the historic London Palladium from March 24-29, 2026.
The Last Five Years premiered at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre in 2001 and was then produced Off-Broadway in March 2002. Since then it has had numerous productions, both in the United States and internationally, and a Broadway production in 2025.
The story explores a five-year relationship between Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress. The show uses a form of storytelling in which Jamie’s story is told in chronological order (starting just after the couple have first met) and Cathy’s story is told in reverse chronological order (beginning the show at the end of the marriage). The characters do not directly interact except for a wedding song in the middle as their timelines intersect.
