Next week sees the first Merlin Theatre Company production to take place in its new studio theatre venue.
The new venue is a joint project between the Merlin Theatre and Frome College and has seen the college turn its Media Arts Studio into a performance space for the theatre to use.
Artistic director at the Merlin Theatre, Claudia Pepler said, “We are very pleased to be able to unveil the new performance base. It is something we’ve wanted to do for a while so we’re excited to show everyone what we’ve done.
“The space will be used mainly for smaller and more intimate work and because it seats only 35, it’s also a great space for new companies to perform to smaller audiences.”
To celebrate the launch, the theatre presents, ‘The Last Five Years’, a modern musical which ingeniously chronicles the five year life of a marriage, from meeting to break-up and from break-up to meeting.
Jason Robert Brown’s Drama Desk winner, ‘The Last Five Years’ has been translated into a handful of languages and was named one of Time Magazine’s 10 best shows of 2001.
As a testament to the show’s longevity and spurred by its regional popularity, ‘The Last Five Years’ enjoyed an Off-Broadway revival at Second Stage in 2013. A film adaptation was released in 2014 starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan.
An emotionally, powerful and intimate musical about two New Yorkers in their twenties who fall in and out of love over the course of five years, the show has an unconventional structure which consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically. The two characters only meet once, at their wedding in the middle of the show. A bitter-sweet love story for Valentines weekend.
The performances are as follows: The 11th, 12th and 13th February, 7pm. All tickets are £10.50, the running time is 120 minutes and the show is recommended age 13 plus.
Visit www.merlintheatre.co.uk for more details and tickets.