Jason Robert BrownOvjeren akaunt

Who choreographed that halftime show? That was some fantastic work.

I taught at @EmersonCollege in the spring of 2002, on my days off from rehearsing the premiere of The Last Five Years. I invited all of my students down to NY from Boston to see the first preview, and most of them came.https://twitter.com/JordanAriGross/status/1223255576743948289 …

So, in conclusion (?): I think you do have to try to meet the audience where they are, but you also have to acknowledge that the piece is deliberately a little elliptical. I don't think any production can solve it completely, and I think that's totally OK. END/

(Oh my god I've never written a 17-tweet response to anything.) 17/

That said, because the schematic was virtually impossible to illustrate, I thought the film allowed you instead to watch the relationship in a more impressionistic way – clearly SOMETHING weird was going on with the timeline and you could just let that wash over you. 16/

(Most of the clothes in my closet are from at least five years ago. For example.) 15/

As for the film, frankly, I think it was always going to be an uphill climb if you could see both actors in each other's stories. Rich did a lot with hair and costumes to try and clarify it, but honestly, how much does anyone's look change in five years? 14/

I think that worked, but it's hard to know since it was pretty obvious that most of that audience knew the show already. 13/

When I directed the revival, I started the show with what we called The Ritual: the actors met in the middle of the stage, they kissed, took a deep breath, and then he motioned for her to begin telling the story. The point was to say This is a memory piece, it is not linear. 12/

(And whenever there's a preview piece in any local paper about any local production, the chronology is mentioned prominently. Whether that's strategic or not, I have no idea. But if I were running a theater, I'd tell the press to mention it prominently and frequently.) 11/

Of course I've never seen a critic admit that they didn't get it, though I'm sure some haven't. But by now, the show has been done so often and the gimmick is so much a part of the show's reputation that I think it's difficult NOT to know the chronology when you walk in. 10/

Neither Daisy nor I could come up with any other solutions that had any elegance at all. And WE both felt like it had been pretty clear from the beginning and was now starting to be ridiculous. So we gave it a kiss and sent it into the world. 9/

And significantly (as someone mentions below), the actors never shared the same space, which should have been a giveaway. But either you got it or you didn't. Norbert's brother famously thought Norbert's character just kept screwing up relationships with different actresses. 8/