LOGAN – The Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre’s production strategy for this summer season seems to be to start small and then gradually expand into blockbuster openings in late June.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the theatre company’s intimate productions beginning in mid-month will be lacking star-power.
The UFOMT season will officially open on Friday, June 12 with the local debut of The Last Five Years, a two-person musical drama starring Vanessa Ballam and Stefan Espinosa.
The 2002 high-concept off-Broadway show was authored by playwright Jason Robert Brown
The plot of The Last Five Years explores the troubled relationship between Jamie, a rising novelist, and Cathy, a struggling actress.
The sung-through musical uses an ingenious form of storytelling in which Jamie’s story is told in chronological order starting just after the couple first meet, while Cathy’s side of the story is told in reverse chronological order beginning at the end of their marriage.
In an obvious parallel to their stormy relationship, the characters do not directly interact except during their wedding when their timelines briefly intersect.
Ballam and Espinosa are married off-stage and have a long tradition of portraying couples in romantic relationships on-stage.
That theme has been played out by the pair in recent local productions of Ragtime, Little Shop of Horrors, She Loves Me, Guys and Dolls and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a complete sucker for any musicals where Ms. Ballam and Stefan Espinosa perform together. Call me corny, but there’s something incurably romantic about a real-life husband and wife falling in love again right before your eyes.
Almost renews your hope for the hoary institution of marriage, doesn’t it? Of course, The Last Five Years doesn’t exactly have a storybook ending.
Also slated on the UFOMT’s bill of fare this summer are two one-act operas that will debut in a 1 p.m. matinee performance on Thursday, June 25.
They are Scalia/Ginsburg, about opposing Supreme Court justices finding common ground in their mutual love of opera, and Trial by Jury, a comic opera by the renowned composing team of Gilbert and Sullivan.
That same evening, the theatre company will reprise their brilliant 2017 production of The Pirates of Penzance, also by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Finally, UFOMT will celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding will a production of 1776 starring Michael Ballam that will premiere on Friday, June 26.
Performances of The Last Five Years and the one-acts Scalia/Ginsburg and Trial by Jury will be staged at the Utah Theatre.
Performances of 1776 and The Pirate of Penzance are slated for the Ellen Eccles Theatre.
The Utah Theatre is located 28 West Center Street in downtown Logan.
The Ellen Eccles Theatre is located at 43 South Main Street in downtown Logan.