OKLAHOMA CITY – OKC’s Southern Plains Productions is closing out their fifth season with a story of love and heartbreak told in opposing points of view in modern classic “The Last Five Years.”
The two-person musical by acclaimed Broadway playwright/composer Jason Robert Brown first debuted in 2002, and remained off-Broadway for years, gaining new life in numerous local productions throughout the country before finally debuting on Broadway in 2025, seeing a big resurgence in popularity ever since.
The small casting and intimate setting make this the perfect show for smaller theatres, and Southern Plains utilizes the space in the Civic Center’s Little Theatre to its advantage.
“The Last Five Years” follows a married couple in different moments of their lives and relationship.
The show opens with Cathy in the couple’s apartment, presumably after they’ve called it quits, five years into their marriage. On the other side of the stage is Jamie, her husband, but at the top of the show they’ve just begun their ill-fated journey into cohabitation and marriage.
The opposing timelines flow in opposite directions, with Cathy’s timeline beginning at the end and working its way back to their very first date.
Jamie’s timeline goes in a more typical story arc, beginning when he’s 23. He is setting off on a new relationship and embarking on his career, and the ambitious young writer is about to get his big break.
The two actors perform alone for every scene except one; their timelines intersect in the middle of the show, and they meet for one romantic scene on their wedding day.
Directed by guest artist Cameron King, who might as well be a regular company member by now, as she has directed several shows at Southern Plains, “The Last Five Years” is a tale that brings audiences into the internal workings of a marriage. The two main characters are living lives that are melding and clashing as they form, and quickly destroy, their imperfect union.
Loosely based on playwright Brown’s own marriage, the show itself actually resulted in even more legal troubles between the real ex-spouses.
Off-stage drama aside, “The Last Five Years” has stood the test of time and is universally appealing to audiences, both in its trueness to life and its ability to pull back the veil on a partnership gone sour.
Erin Clemons is Cathy and Tristan McIntyre is Jamie.
They have the shared responsibility of performing solo for most of the performance, with small glimpses into their intertwining storylines along the way. Both are dynamic performers and have as much chemistry with each other as they do with the empty chairs they sing to all night.
The entirety of the musical is performed in song, and Southern Plains is smart to include a live band on stage. Not only does it fill the stage and create a cozy “slice of life” setting, but it also elevates the show from canned songs to the immersive experience that live music creates.
Other theatre houses should take note: there’s simply no substitute for live musicians.
“The Last Five Years” is the perfect fit for Southern Plains to close out this season. This is, after all, their fifth season, and in the last five years, they have found their place in the theatre community.
The company began during COVID, and since then, they have grown from a fledgling theatre doing outdoor shows at the Myriad Water Stage to performing full productions in various venues around the city.
Next season, Southern Plains is once again reaching unchartered territory. The company will debut a world premiere musical in May 2027 with “Hit Show: A New Musical,” a collaboration with The Carnegie Theatre of Northern Kentucky.
“Hit Show” tells the true story of the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. through the popular noir-crime style that was popularized in the 1960s, promising to be an intriguing new show from this young company.
“The Last Five Years,” the closing performance for Southern Plains Productions fifth season, runs through June 6th, 2026. Performances are inside the Little Theatre, located on the main campus of the Civic Center Music Hall.
Visit southernplainsproductions.org for tickets.
Adrienne Proctor is a theater and arts writer in Oklahoma City. She's been contributing to the arts reporting space since 2017.
