Interview: Zoë McLaughlin Talks About Finally Bringing THE LAST FIVE YEARS To the Stage

After putting the show on pause due to COVID in 2020, Tally Ho! Productions is finally bringing THE LAST FIVE YEARS to the stage. We sat down to chat with Zoë McLaughlin about the wait and how ready she is to get up on stage to play Cathy Hiatt next month at Theatre on the Bay.

BWW: First out the gate, I need to ask how it's been living with all of the delays that COVID put in the mix. You've been part of the show from the very beginning and now you're finally getting to go on stage. How are you feeling?

Zoë: The show has been coming for 2 years now, it was cancelled twice due to COVID, so it does feel like there is the added pressure that it better be worth the wait! In terms of performing, I had a three week run at The Vineyard Hotel with a show called The Blue Piano/The Blue Guitar towards the end of 2021 so I'm not completely cold with regards to performing, but the idea of live performance does always seem surreal if not inconceivable until you're in rehearsals and one starts trusting in one's own ability again, especially when you haven't been performing frequently.

BWW: Can you tell us a bit about the show and what audiences can expect when they come to see it?

Zoë: Hopefully many of your readers are familiar with the show already, but for those who aren't, it's a two-hander, a man and a woman and their journey through a relationship, which, for whatever reasons depending on how the audience member perceives it, is only passing. The show is almost entirely sung-through, and the audience will hopefully be charmed, and moved by Jason Robert Brown's eclectic score and often poignant lyrics, brought to life with six musicians live on stage. They can also enjoy a fun throwback to 90s aesthetic.

BWW: THE LAST FIVE YEARS is a great concept, with one story running forwards and the other in reverse. How did you find that connection with Anthony Downing and his character, since you're running in opposite directions in the story?

Zoë: At this moment I have not worked with Anthony yet. We had to say goodbye to the wonderful David Viviers (our original Jamie) due to scheduling conflicts, but we are very lucky and excited to be working with Anthony Downing going forward. In answer to the question though, as you mentioned there is only one scene in the middle of the show in which the actors are both physically present. It's a romantic scene, so there is a kiss which is always a definite ice breaker. But in all seriousness, when we first rehearsed back in 2020, our director Paul Griffiths had us first play out all the scenes with the other actor present in the space which helped to later play with the same energy against an imaginary presence, which is a challenge. There is a lot that an actor can reveal to an audience through small interactions with the other actor, touching a hand or pulling a hand back, keeping a physical distance, turning away to conceal something and so on, so without that visual interaction, one must work a bit harder to convey the changing dynamics of a relationship using just your own physicality.

BWW: How have you prepared for the role? It must be quite tricky since you went through the entire rehearsal period and then had to wait two years before picking it up again. Have you changed anything between then and now in your character and performance?

Zoë: I think that because one is constantly maturing, coming back to this character after two years, I feel that I can understand Cathy's arc in a more insightful way. I'm less cynical about Cathy now, which allows me to empathise with her a bit easier, and I think this time she may be played a little less wry and jaded and a little more earnest and vulnerable. There will be different acting and character choices made by me, depending on whether my director is on board of course! I think we're all intent on starting with a clean slate though and not trying to recreate anything. We are also working in a different theatre now, with a much larger stage and set design and there will be a lot more physical set pieces to consider this time around so that will also inspire different choices. We are still a few weeks from rehearsals so I still need to delve into it, but I look back now on what my pre-COVID performance would have been and I'm grateful to be able to review and make changes.

BWW: When you first auditioned for the role, was it one you've wanted to play for a while?

Zoë: Actually, I am fortunate enough to have a partner (Jaco Griessel) who is working in the same industry, and who is producing this show. This is a show which he has been passionate about for a long time and strangely enough, he had had me in mind for this role even before we were a couple, having met through his vocal tutoring. His main skillset is on the musical direction side, but he is somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades in all the necessary elements of production. He established Tally Ho! Productions in 2019, when we had both been experiencing how saturated the South African musical theatre industry was at the time, and wanted to create our own opportunities to work. After I listened to the whole score, I grew to love the show. It is a lot more nuanced than I had expected, likely owing to the fact that it was based on Jason Robert Brown's own relationship and experiences. The show explores some uncomfortable truths about human nature within relationships, which I think is what keeps an audience engaged, being faced with our own weaknesses and hypocrisies which we don't often acknowledge together.

BWW: If this isn't your dream role, what is? And what drew you to a life as a performer?

Zoë: My dream roles are still the ones that I grew up watching or listening to as a child, I must have watched MARY POPPINS and MY FAIR LADY a few hundred times. Eliza Doolittle is top of the list, and Fantine or Cossette in LES MISERABLES. I imagined performing as young Cossette as a child, the cassette tape was a fixture during car rides. LES MISERABLES is still the show that reignites my love for musical theatre and was probably also what planted the idea of performing in the first place, seeing a production of it at age 4. I'd also jump at the chance to play any of the Rodgers and Hammerstein heroines, Anna in THE KING AND I or Maria in SOUND OF MUSIC. A bit later in life I'd love to play one of Sondheim's tragic old dames, Miss Lovvett in SWEENEY TODD or Desiree Armfeldt in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, and besides Sondheim, I'd love to play Norma Desmond in SUNSET BOULEVARD. Just to name a few, haha!

BWW: Finally, what are you most looking forward to about getting to perform in THE LAST FIVE YEARS at last?

Zoë: I think I'm just looking forward to being in the swing of a production again. As a theatre performer, it's so easy to get disillusioned about the viability of making a career of it, especially in a country where the industry is still small. So, in light of that, the times when you are performing a run, and when you see people in seats, wanting to consume theatre, it's just a wonderful sense that you are doing something of consequence, that it's not just your own indulgence or something that you enjoy doing, fleeting as those periods may be. Hopefully we'll be able to tour it a bit. I'm just looking forward to the challenge and thrill of performing again!

Photo credit: supplied

---

THE LAST FIVE YEARS will be on at Theatre on the Bay 29 March to 9 April. Tickets are between R180 and R220 from Computicket.

To post a comment, you must register and login.