It was announced today that music star Nick Jonas and Tony Award winner Adrienne Warren will return to Broadway next year in The Last Five Years. Set to open in the spring of 2025, this will mark the Jason Robert Brown musical’s Broadway premiere.
Jonas, best known as a member of the Jonas Brothers, will star as Jamie. He was last seen on Broadway in 2023 when the Jonas Brothers played a concert residency at the Marquis Theatre, and before that in 2012, starring as J. Pierrepont Finch in the revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Warren, who will star as Cathy, returns to the Broadway stage for the first time since her Tony Award-winning turn in TINA – The Tina Turner Musical.
The new production will be directed by 2024 Tony Award nominee Whitney White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding).
“The Last Five Years is one of the greatest original American musicals in the canon. I could not be more excited to bring it to Broadway for the first time with Nick and Adrienne, two powerhouse performers and lovers of theatre,” says White in a statement. “I fell in love with this musical many years ago when I was a student at Northwestern. I found it then, and still consider The Last Five Years to be such a human portrait and a beautiful exercise in making time—the one thing we are all bound to—feel consequential. The songs are iconic, and the vibes are very 2000-and-now because this is a story about artists falling in and out of love and what happens when something has to come to an end. There is no place in the world that can rip people apart and bring them together like New York City. I think we all understand how hard it is to leave something behind; a lover, a job, a country, a relationship that doesn’t serve you anymore. But for me, the heartbreak at the center of the show walks hand in hand with abundant love and possibility. I know that audiences will be blown away, once again, by the brilliance of Jason Robert Brown’s one-of-a-kind composition, orchestration and musical vision, and that they will see themselves in Jamie and Cathy—two young people trying to figure it all out.”
“On June 15, 1999, I wrote the first song of a new project. It was the first time I had started a project without knowing where it was going to end up, without a producer or collaborators, just me very much on my own needing to find the music and words that would tell a story that was twisting my heart into impossible shapes every day,” says Brown, the musical’s creator. “For 25 years, I have let The Last Five Years lead me on its journey, through our very first production in Skokie in 2001 to our Off-Broadway premiere a year later, a thrilling film version, a record-breaking revival at Second Stage, and thousands of productions spanning every continent. I have always believed that when the time was right, The Last Five Years would make its way to Broadway. To have Nick and Adrienne taking on these roles is a composer’s dream come true, and to have Whitney’s extraordinary guidance and vision is the hope of every playwright. It has taken 25 years, but the time is right.”
The Last Five Years follows two New Yorkers, rising author Jamie and aspiring actress Cathy, as they fall in and out of love over the course of five years. With an “extraordinary and jubilant” (Chicago Tribune) score, the musical explores whether a couple, once united by their dreams, can remain connected as their paths diverge.
Jonas and Warren will present live at the Tony Awards on CBS on Sunday, June 16 and chat about the announcement and their return to Broadway on Monday, June 17 at 8 a.m. EST on ABC’s Good Morning America.
More information including a theatre, opening night and additional creative team members will be announced at a later date.
Photo by Norman Jean Roy.