Displaying items by tag: Glenview

When Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years premiered at Chicago’s Northlight Theatre in 2001, it flipped the traditional rom-com musical blueprint on its head. Off came the rose-colored glasses, and what was presented was an intimate, searing, and structurally unique take on the modern relationship, inspired by Brown’s own love and loss. Now, twenty-five years later, this piece, directed by Christina Ramirez, returns to Chicagoland at Oil Lamp Theater in Glenview. The Last Five Years presents the entire course of a relationship between Jamie, a rising author, and Cathy, a struggling actress – from the first hello to the final goodbye – performed by only two actors, who take turns singing their hearts out in this vocally demanding score.

Structure is everything in this show. Jamie’s timeline starts from the high of their first date and moves chronologically, while Cathy’s story begins at the end and moves backward. They meet only once, in the middle, for their wedding, and then move in opposite directions.

Lili Galluzzo, playing Cathy, is an absolute powerhouse. She commands the stage with a voice that can belt to the rafters, packing an emotional punch with every note. Whether she is navigating the comedic neuroses of “A Summer in Ohio” or the crushing vulnerability of “I'm Still Hurting,” she conveys unvarnished emotion that anchors the production's vocal stakes.

As Jamie, Abraham Deitz-Green has an effortless, magnetic charm. From his opening number, he is clearly having fun, schmoozing the crowd and winning the audience over with ease. He infuses the ambitious young novelist with infectious likability. In fact, it makes it hard for the audience to decipher who is at fault more in this relationship, forcing them to question everything, just as the leads do.

Perhaps Cathy is too pessimistic? Years of career letdowns have tainted her perspective on life, and misery loves – needs – company. Maybe she can’t be happy unless Jamie is unhappy too. Or perhaps Jamie was always emotionally unavailable? As his career takes off, does he want to give himself sacrificially to another person, or does he want to be the new, shiny toy on the scene? Maybe he only wants to reap the benefits of love without caring for it. These are the questions the audience is wrestling with thanks to their strong performances.

Lili Galluzzo in THE LAST FIVE YEARS from Oil Lamp Theater.

But while individually the leads command the stage, their chemistry together left something to be desired. The musical’s structure itself doesn’t help much. After all, the majority of the time, they sing alone, interacting only with props. So, the anticipation of them finally being in the same timeline, sharing space, perhaps places an undue burden on the moment. Still, their big song together, which is also their wedding song, felt flat. The same charm that Jamie had when he landed his big break was gone, and the fire that Cathy had joking about Ohio was missing. Given that this was opening night, the chemistry may well evolve as the actors settle into each other’s timing, but in this performance it was noticeably absent. Since that crucial piece wasn’t there, it felt a little as if these characters never truly understood each other from the start. Were they truly lovers or just lines intersecting at a point?

Oil Lamp’s space is the perfect venue for this intimate show. The set really doesn’t need much; the songs are the main course. But the set was a bit of a distraction. Flat panels slid on and off stage to delineate different locations or the passage of time, but they were rather clunky when they were moved, like a stubborn shower door. At other times, Jamie entered from behind the audience, stepping directly in from the street. The sudden opening of the door and the outside light coming in pulled one out of the moment. The scenes that worked best were those which used lighting to direct your focus and shine on Jamie or Cathy as they untangled their vulnerabilities or drew you in with bursts of emotion.

The Last Five Years is a unique art piece, and its story is not for everyone. Can love and ambition mix, or are they oil and water? This untraditional, somber look at relationships offers unflinching moments, lush and playful songs, and questions you have to wrestle with – no doubt why it has found its way into the hearts of many musical theatergoers. Whether you're "Team Jamie" or "Team Cathy," fans of this modern musical will certainly fall in love with Oil Lamp’s rendition, thanks to the dynamic performances of its leads. They perform this high-wire act with skill and vocal precision, bringing this complex story to life with incredible emotional depth.

The Last Five Years plays at Oil Lamp Theater now through July 5.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

Theresa Rebeck’s Poor Behavior at Oil Lamp Theatre, directed by Lauren Katz, opens with the easy warmth of old friends reconnecting - only to reveal how quickly a shared history can curdle. Within minutes, the play exposes the messy, magnetic dynamics that will drive the evening off the rails.

Peter and his wife, Ella (Jack Morsovillo and Ksa Curry), have welcomed their longtime friends, Ian and Maureen (Sam Fain and Lauren Paige), to their getaway country home for what’s meant to be an easy, wine‑soaked weekend. At first, everything feels harmless enough: the four drift around the kitchen and dining area, chatting, teasing, negotiating snacks - Peter is fixated on getting ice cream, Maureen keeps the small talk humming - the kind of casual domestic bustle that suggests comfort and history. But the mood shifts quickly when Ella and Ian slip into a heated exchange. Their rhythm is so practiced, so charged, that it feels less like a friendly debate and more like a well‑worn battleground. The familiarity between them is startling; before the play has even fully settled, you can’t help but wonder whether these two are circling an old intimacy the others aren’t acknowledging.

Ella insists - almost with a kind of moral urgency - that there is still goodness in the world, that people are capable of generosity and grace if you’re willing to look for it. Ian, however, has no patience for her optimism. Once enamored with America when he first arrived from Ireland, he now sees the country through a far bleaker lens. Every example Ella offers is batted away; to Ian, America is a place that devours resources, exploits the planet, and disguises greed as virtue. His cynicism isn’t casual - it’s sharpened, almost weaponized - and the more Ella pushes, the more he digs in. The argument escalates until the air in the room feels charged and brittle, the kind of tension that makes everyone else freeze. And then, just as it threatens to tip into something truly damaging, they both pull back. Cooler heads prevail, apologies surface, and the group collectively pretends they haven’t just witnessed a fault line crack open beneath the weekend – for the moment.

Peter has known Maureen since childhood - his brother even dated her for a time - and that shared history lends their friendship an instinctive ease. Neither couple has children, a fact they use, somewhat conveniently, to justify how tightly they cling to one another’s company. But do they actually like each other as much as they claim? As the evening unfolds, small cracks begin to show. The conversation among the foursome is lively enough on the surface, yet it quickly becomes clear that each marriage carries its own quiet fractures. Then, when Maureen misinterprets a moment of consolation between Ella and Ian - whose father has just died, or so he says - the weekend tilts sharply off its axis. Accusations fly, lies multiply, manipulation takes root, and before long the polite veneer between these two couples is stripped away entirely.

(L to R) Sam Fain, Ksa Curry, Jack Morsovillo and Lauren Paige in POOR BEHAVIOR from Oil Lamp Theater. Photos by Gosia Matuszewska - GosiaPhotography.com.

At first, the “poor behavior” can be dismissed as simple drunkenness - after all, Ian has plowed through four bottles of wine on his own. But as the night wears on, it becomes clear that alcohol is only the accelerant, not the cause. Rebeck gradually peels back the layers on all four characters: Maureen, whose anxiety and emotional fragility leave her grasping for reassurance; Ian, who seems to relish stoking doubt and discomfort whenever the opportunity presents itself; Ella is idealistic but is clearly withholding something; it’s subtle, but the undercurrent of it hums beneath everything she does; and mild-mannered Peter, who defaults to denial, choosing avoidance over confrontation and clinging to the hope that he can simply walk away from the weekend as though nothing has happened. What begins as sloppy, alcohol-fueled bickering soon exposes the fault lines that have been waiting for the slightest spark to rupture.  

Sam Fain and Ksa Curry deliver two of the evening’s most arresting performances, their scenes pulsing with an undeniable, almost disarming connection from the get-go. Fain’s Ian commands the room with a dangerous charm, twisting conversations to his advantage while letting flashes of buried desire slip through the cracks, while Curry’s Ella meets him with a grounded emotional intelligence that reveals the deeper currents Rebeck threads beneath their exchanges. Lauren Paige brings a raw, aching vulnerability to Maureen, charting her spirals of insecurity with precision and empathy, and Jack Morsovillo anchors the chaos as Peter, his quiet restraint and mounting frustration giving the play its moral center.

The arguing is relentless, and the tension feels startlingly real. Under Lauren Katz’s direction, the world of Poor Behavior becomes a room primed to combust with every glance, pause, and interruption calibrated to reveal the messy, volatile dynamics between these four characters. Katz cultivates a realism so precise that the uncomfortable moments become genuinely unsettling, keeping us on our toes as we anticipate what might unfold next - good or bad. And though we may root for these couples to find their way back to solid ground, the production holds us captive with the stark authenticity of their unraveling, a truthfulness that makes the prospect of reconciliation feel increasingly remote. Rebeck’s script raises thorny questions about the strength of relationships, the dangers of complacency (or not – for some), the limits of tolerance, and the moment when “enough” finally becomes enough - and Katz ensures those questions echo long after the final scene.

The thoughtfully crafted set serves this play perfectly, which strengthens the production’s overall effectiveness. Trenton Jones shapes a kitchen‑and‑dining‑room layout that feels like a genuinely lived‑in countryside home. A staircase rises toward the suggested upstairs bedrooms, while just beyond the kitchen refrigerator sits the entrance to a ground‑floor guest room. The result is a spacious‑looking design that expands the world of the play and works remarkably well on Oil Lamp’s intimate stage.

Oil Lamp Theater’s well-paced Poor Behavior succeeds because every element - Rebeck’s incisive writing, Katz’s sharply attuned direction, and a quartet of deeply committed performances - works together to illuminate the muddled, contradictory ways people love, wound, and misread one another. The staging embraces discomfort without sacrificing its humanity, inviting us to recognize uncomfortable truths about ourselves in the chaos onstage. By the time the lights fade, we’re left with the uneasy understanding that relationships don’t always resolve neatly, yet the effort to navigate them is what makes us unmistakably human. It’s the kind of play that stays with you long after you’ve left the theater.

Poor Behavior is being performed at Oil Lamp Theatre through May 10^th. For tickets and/or more show information, click here.

Highly recommended.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com.