NY Public Library for the Performing Arts Curator Doug Reside on THE LAST FIVE YEARS

BroadwayWorld.com continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Doug Reside (Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator for the Billy Rose Theatre Division) on THE LAST FIVE YEARS:

I like to tell myself that I'm not the only one who has watched the recently released clip of the movie version The Last Five Years enough times that there is now a faint ghost of Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan burnt into my monitor. "You don't have to change a thing, just stay with me!" sings Cathy Hiatt in this clip as she attempts to seduce Jamie Wellerstein (played by Jordan).

The Last Five Years could not have been seen by more than 50,000 people during its New York premiere at the 391-seat Minetta Lane Theater. Still, it has become one of the new classics of the American musical theater canon. There has already been a major off-Broadway revival and (according to Music Theatre International which licenses the show) there is a production scheduled to play somewhere in the United States almost every night until at least October of 2015.

So how did The Last Five Years earn a loyal, growing following and become the new classic worthy of a major motion picture today? The musical resonated with young audiences in a way that few other musicals have managed. Musicals in the late 1980s and '90s often felt oddly dated or otherworldly. Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera both felt very European and classical. But references in The Last Five Years' lyrics to Borders Books, Duran-Duran, and Tom Cruise, however much they now date the show, felt effortlessly modern in the early 2000s. This was clearly a musical for the Friends generation, but one with a sophistication and, initially, relative obscurity, that gave theater fans around the country the gratifying insidery feeling for knowing about it and being the first to share it with their friends.

RENT's '90's rock music and setting in AIDS-ravaged Greenwich Village won a huge following among many young people, but may have failed to connect fully with some outside New York for whom Alphabet City and St. Mark's Place were as remote as the slums of St. Michel in Victor Hugo's Paris. And while The Last Five Years clearly establishes a specific setting, turn-of-the-millenium New York (with a few Ohio towns sprinkled in), the story could have happened almost anywhere in America. High school kids, college students, and twenty- and thirtysomethings all connected and identified with the all-too-relatable story of a relationship that fails for a complex set of reasons.

But like RENT, Phantom, and Les Miserables, the cast recording for The Last Five Years was more or less a complete record of the show and could be appreciated even by those who never saw a production. The music appealed even to those who didn't usually like musicals, but was insanely complex (as audition accompanists around the country soon began to curse the name of this Jason Robert Brown).

Yet off-Broadway musicals with short runs rarely become movies. Hedwig and the Angry Inch was adapted for film only after the musical's award-winning two-year run off-Broadway. Reefer Madness, which, like The Last Five Years, suffered from the post-9/11 dip in theater attendance, only managed to achieve Showtime television movie status. However, the content of The Last Five Years may have been more palatable to a wider range of audiences (adultery and divorce may offend fewer than botched sex changes and marijuana). Further, the relative ease with which The Last Five Years can be produced (two actors, a small band, and abstract set) has led to regional productions in almost every English-speaking city with an active musical theatre community, and these productions may have developed a ready-made audience for the film. In any case, I know I, at least, will be in the audience.