Singer-actor Nick Jonas and Tony Award-winning Tina actor Adrienne Warren will star within the first-ever Broadway manufacturing of Jason Robert Brown’s musical The Final 5 Years, a present that’s constructed a loyal following since its New York debut Off Broadway in 2002.
Opening in spring 2025, the musical can be directed by Whitney White, the Tony-nominated director of 2024 Greatest Play nominee Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.
Venue, opening evening and extra artistic group members can be introduced at a later date. Producers Seaview, Ambassador Theatre Group and The Season described the challenge as “a daring, brand-new manufacturing.”
“The Final 5 Years is without doubt one of the biggest authentic American musicals within the canon,” White stated in a press release. “I couldn’t be extra excited to carry it to Broadway for the primary time with Nick and Adrienne, two powerhouse performers and lovers of theatre. I fell in love with this musical a few years in the past after I was a pupil at Northwestern. I discovered it then, and nonetheless think about The Final 5 Years to be such a human portrait and a lovely train in making time– the one factor we’re all certain to– really feel consequential.”
Each Jonas and Warren are scheduled to be presenters at tonight’s Tony Awards ceremony.
Jonas and Warren will play, respectively, rising writer Jamie and aspiring actor Cathy, two New Yorkers who fall out and in of lover over the course of 5 years. The musical, as its synopsis reads, “explores whether or not a pair, as soon as united by their desires, can stay linked as their paths diverge.”
The musical was first produced in Chicago in 2001 starring Norbert Leo Butz and Lauren Kennedy, and a 12 months later Off Broadway with Sherie Rene Scott taking the feminine position. The quite a few different stagings over time embody a 2016 London manufacturing starring Jonathan Bailey and Samantha Barks. A 2014 movie adaptation directed by Richard LaGravenese starred Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick.
“On June 15, 1999, I wrote the primary track of a brand new challenge,” stated Brown (Parade, Mr. Saturday Evening). “It was the primary time I had began a challenge with out figuring out the place it was going to finish up, and not using a producer or collaborators, simply me very a lot alone needing to seek out the music and phrases that will inform a narrative that was twisting my coronary heart into inconceivable shapes day-after-day.
“For twenty-five years, I’ve let The Final 5 Years lead me on its journey, by our very first manufacturing in Skokie in 2001 to our Off Broadway premiere a 12 months later, an exciting movie model, a record-breaking revival at Second Stage [starring Adam Kantor and Betsy Wolfe], and 1000’s of productions spanning each continent. I’ve all the time believed that when the time was proper, The Final 5 Years would make its approach to Broadway. To have Nick and Adrienne taking up these roles is a composer’s dream come true, and to have Whitney’s extraordinary steerage and imaginative and prescient is the hope of each playwright. It has taken twenty-five years, however the time is true.”
Musical numbers in The Final 5 Years embody The Subsequent Ten Minutes, “A Miracle Would Occur/When You Come Dwelling to Me,” “Shiksa Goddess,” and “Nonetheless Hurting.”
“The songs are iconic,” White stated, “and the vibes are very two-thousand-and-now as a result of it is a story about artists falling out and in of affection and what occurs when one thing has to come back to an finish. There is no such thing as a place on the earth that may rip individuals aside and produce them collectively like New York Metropolis. I believe all of us perceive how exhausting it’s to go away one thing behind; a lover, a job, a rustic, a relationship that doesn’t serve you anymore. However for me, the heartbreak on the middle of the present walks hand in hand with ample love and risk. I do know that audiences can be blown away, as soon as once more, by the brilliance of Jason Robert Brown’s one-of-a-kind composition, orchestration and musical imaginative and prescient, and that they may see themselves in Jamie and Cathy– two younger individuals making an attempt to determine all of it out.”
Not counting his 2023 Jonas Brothers live performance residency, Jonas has appeared on Broadway 4 occasions, in Les Misérables, Magnificence and the Beast, Annie Get Your Gun, and The best way to Achieve Enterprise With out Actually Making an attempt. Warren made her Broadway debut in 2012 in Carry It On – The Musical after which in 2016 in Shuffle Alongside, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Adopted. She final appeared on Broadway in her career-making, Tony-winning efficiency as Tina Turner in 2019’s Tina.
