I fell in love with theatre by reading Shakespeare in high school English class. I loved the structure and how the language worked on your emotions. It was pure form in action. It wasn’t until years later that I fell in love with musicals for the exact same reasons. I walked past a practice room and heard a woman playing the cello and singing the first song in this show (Still Hurting). That was my entry point into musical theatre. There was nothing flashy. It was pure raw emotion, poetic and form-bending. I’ve grown to love and appreciate the genre but it was this musical that started that shift.

Composer Jason Robert Brown is sophisticated, literate, and passionate in his craft and storytelling. Here is a story that plays with metaphor and form in ways that get my synapses firing. It is more a poem than a play. Brown takes the heart threads of love and runs them in opposite directions, so that while the man is falling in love, the woman is mourning the end of their relationship. The music makes my heart sing and break all at once. Perhaps it’s because these two artists are trying to make their love for each other and their love of their craft co-exist, perhaps it’s the nonlinar structure, perhaps it’s just the chill in the score. I love this story. It’s small and it’s huge all at once.

I always come back to this musical because I ache for Jamie and Cathy. I ache for their futures and I am reminded of the mistakes we make when we we give over to love. How lucky we are to find each other at all, to invest and to care for, and to grow through the pain. When I sing the songs in my car or fall deep into this story, my heart wants to beat out of its chest. I feel alive.

The lasting works in the theatrical canon are infused with love stories — and this is one of them. Let there never be enough reminders that love is always worth the risk.

For Duckie

The Last Five Years plays Oct. 23 – Nov. 17. Don’t miss this emotionally powerful and intimate musical.