Nick Jonas musical is the worst of the Broadway season

“The Last Five Years,” composer Jason Robert Brown’s downer story of a failed marriage, has all the time been an unsatisfying musical.

Sure, legions cherish Brown’s 24-year-old pop-rock tunes like “I Can Do Better Than That” and “Moving Too Fast” — not me! — and the emotional sledgehammer numbers are mainstays of cabarets everywhere in the world.

However after they’re fused collectively to inform the womp-womp story of Jamie and Cathy, spouses who barely work together onstage as they loudly belt out their grievances, they make for a whiny bore of a present that manages to be each slim and lumbering.

Imagine me, regardless of a brief 90-minute runtime, “The Last Five Years” is rarely “moving too fast.” You’re 5 years older by curtain name.

Now, add in woefully miscast leads in Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren and barely-there path by Whitney White and what you get is the dirge that opened Sunday evening on the Hudson Theatre — one of many worst musical productions of the season. It’s appallingly dangerous.

Within the ugly revival of a piece that doesn’t belong on Broadway within the first place, the pair’s already monotonous journey turns into a textureless live performance that’s frustratingly arduous to trace for a present that’s been always produced everywhere in the world for greater than twenty years.

Audiences all the time deserve readability, however “The Last Five Years” should be particularly well-defined in its staging and performances, for the reason that bizarre construction is jarring to the uninitiated.

You see, Jamie tells the couple’s story in sequential order, from assembly gentile Cathy, his “Shiksa Goddess” who’s a struggling actress, to their breakup.

Cathy’s songs, in the meantime, happen in reverse. She begins “hurting” from the break up and ventures backwards to the elation of their first date — a la “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Effectively, better of luck figuring any of that out. The primary Broadway bow of Brown’s semi-autobiographical musical is nearly inconceivable to observe, and the viewer offers up on it shortly.

A lot of the blame falls on Jonas’ dire enunciation as Jamie, a Jewish creator who finds success in publishing whereas Cathy settles for a summer season inventory theater job in Ohio.

Throughout some songs — particularly the short ones — I couldn’t make out a single phrase popping out of his mouth. All that escapes are adequately reached notes, just like the trainer from “Charlie Brown” crooning a solo at a piano bar.

And the pop star, who’s on Broadway for the second time as an grownup, just isn’t a very expressive actor both, so his eyes and physique don’t do the heavy lifting for his lips.

With the phrases forged apart, his unintelligible Jamie has no character to talk of, and we get no impression by any means of who he’s. Brown’s lyrics have by no means been more true: Jamie is over and Jamie is gone.

Jonas just isn’t the only bum resolution, although. White’s staging, or lack thereof, is un-engaging and blurry slop.

Though the musical is scenically spare, that doesn’t imply it shouldn’t be particular, artful or stimulating. And but the revival is gauche and ugly. Narratively watery, White places the viewers onto a paddle-less boat. It’s by no means instantly clear the place or when Jamie and Cathy are, aside from downstage middle on the Hudson.

Apart from an occasional tour to a clumsy raised platform, that is Park and Bark 101.

Warren, who received a Tony Award taking part in the title position in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” is the one ingredient considerably price appreciating right here. Her voice is predictably beautiful and she or he has A+ diction. (I’ve by no means been so grateful to easily perceive fundamental phrases.)

However, maybe due to who Warren is onstage with and what she’s been instructed to do there, her Cathy just isn’t as deep or intriguing because the character may very well be. She’s poised and unshakeable, and by no means neurotic or fragile — qualities you’d sooner count on of a down-on-her-luck actress in frenetic New York who always faces rejection. Warren borders on bland.

Nonetheless, she builds extra of a personality than Jonas. Which is to say, she builds a character.

If the group doesn’t get to know this Jamie in any respect, they at the least go on a velocity date with Cathy.

If solely “The Last Five Years” had been that speedy. Because the lights went down on this ponderous misfire, I felt your entire room pondering the identical factor: They may do higher than that.