March 19, 2008
The Last Five Years at Westport's MTC MainStage

MTC MainStage, Music Theatre of Connecticut's Professional Equity Acting Company, presents The Last Five Years, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and directed by MTC MainStage Artistic Director Kevin Connors. Performances are April 4-13 and take place at the MTC MainStage Studio Theatre in Westport, CT.

The Last Five Years is an emotionally powerful and intimate musical about two New Yorkers, Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress, who fall in and out of love over the course of five years. The Last Five Years premiered in Chicago in 2001 and was then produced off-Broadway in March 2002. The Off-Broadway production won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding music and lyrics, as well as receiving Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Actor, Outstanding Actress, Outstanding Orchestrations, and Outstanding Set Design. It also received the Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Actor, and the Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical.

Kristin Huffman of Milford plays Cathy, and recently appeared in the Tony winning and Grammy nominated revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company, in which she played a leading role as well as flute, sax and piccolo. Kristin has performed with professional operas, theatres and symphonies around the US and in Europe, favorite roles include Meg in Brigadoon, Gooch in Mame, Grace in Annie and Anna in The King and I. Her varied background also includes Miss Ohio and Runner-up Miss America. Kristin will be blogging throughout the rehearsal and production of The Last Five Years on her Broadwayworld.com column, "Actorquest."

Robert Sutton plays Jamie, and was most recently seen as Sam Carmichael in the Las Vegas company of Mamma Mia!. On Broadway, he was the understudy for both The Beast and Gaston in Disney's Beauty and The Beast. His other recent credits include Japheth in Off Broadway's The Ark and P. Puff Diddy Daddy in the Las Vegas cast of We Will Rock You. Regionally, Rob has performed roles in Children of Eden (Ford's Theatre), Camelot (Westchester Broadway Theatre), Oklahoma! (Reagle Players), Mame (North Shore Music Theatre) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (Sacramento Music Circus).

The Last Five Years is directed by Kevin Connors, MTC MainStage Executive Artistic Director and co-founder of Music Theatre of Connecticut. Musical direction by Matt Castle, scenic design by James Burns, lighting design by Graham Kindred, costume design by Diane Vanderkroef and stage management by Anna Becker.

Music and lyrics for The Last Five Years are by Jason Robert Brown who was hailed as "one of Broadway's smartest and most sophisticated songwriters since Stephen Sondheim" by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jason Robert Brown's other musicals include Songs for a New World, Parade, Urban Cowboy and 13.

The MTC MainStage 2007/08 Season is generously sponsored by Shoff Darby Companies, Inc., with additional support from The Daphne Seybolt Culpeper Memorial Foundation.

Performances take place April 4-13, Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 5pm and 8pm, Sundays at 3pm at MTC MainStage Studio Theatre, 246 Post Road East in Colonial Green (lower level) in Westport, CT. Tickets are $35. Student and senior tickets available on a limited basis for some performances. Special gala performance on Saturday, April 5 at 8pm. Reservations suggested. The Last Five Years contains adult language and themes and may not be suitable for younger audiences. For reservations or more information, call MTCMainStage at 203.454.3883 or visit www.MTCMainStage.org

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The following blog is written by The Last Five Years leading lady Kristin Huffman, with the most recent entry appearing first...

April 12, 2008
THE FOURTH WALL

The Fourth Wall. That theatre term is associated with the invisible “wall” that the audience is actually looking through to see into the scene. The back wall of the set, the side walls which lead into the wings are the other three. But the wall that we, as actors, are not usually supposed to ‘break’ is that fourth wall that separates us from you, the audience.

The cool thing about doing a show in such a close and intimate space is that the audience really can see everything you do up close and personal as if they were in your house. The challenging part for the actors is in not making eye contact and actually ” talking” directly to those audience members, thus breaking the fourth wall. What is even more challenging in a show like The Last Five Years is that the actors only “speak” to each other in the “Wedding Scene”. That is the only time the two of us are in “real time” with each other and can actually speak face to face. The rest of the show we speak to an invisible past image of that person. So each piece is really presented very “open” to the audience. I have tried to conquer the challenge of accidentally making eye contact with the VERY close audience members by taking out my contacts. I am very nearsighted and this does help.

Last night I had an interesting fourth wall experience during my song, “Summer in Ohio” in which I use a pad and pencil to write to my new husband, Jamie, and “read” out loud what I had written to him. I had been rather clumsy all day, running into things and dropping things, and so it really came as no surprise to me when I dropped the pencil and it rolled off the six inch high stage and onto the foot of a woman two feet away on the front row.

If this had been a bigger theatre in which the stage was a couple feet off the ground and the audience was more than ten or so feet away, I would have had to just forget about the pencil. But the woman in front row bent over, picked it up and handed it back to me. I kept singing, reached out and took it from her and kept going. What made me giggle, inside of course, was that I was supposed to be writing this while sitting on a pier in front of a river. That fourth wall this time was leading out into the river. Being a creative actor who must justify everything that happens I decided that the Loch Ness Monster must’ve swam by and just handed it back to me. Or perhaps a passing scuba diver. Maybe a very large fish. Hey, you can’t just break the fourth wall and not have a reason that works with your story. As I left the stage I quietly said, in character of course, “Wow, they have some crazy fish here in Ohio”, which made Matt giggle as I passed him on the way out.

Sometimes I wonder, given my current clutzy nature and my severe nearsightedness, how I will justify it tonight if I accidentally misstep and fall into the lap of someone on the front row. Tune in to find out.

April 6, 2008
AN INTMATE SPACE

We made it! Both Rob and I made it through our Opening Night and weekend at MTC Mainstage. After our first show was finished we laughed to each other backstage about having been petrified the entire time.

There were a couple of things keeping us on edge in this intimate theatre. The first, of course, was worrying about forgetting lyrics. I think I substituted “ground” for “floor” once and instead of “stealing a look at your picture on the inside sleeve” I “stole your book at a look on the inside sleeve”. But other than giving the audience the impression that Cathy was a kleptomaniac, it was fine. Most of the time when I forget a line I will just say, nananana or “something something” so using words that might actually fit is an improvement for me. My former “husband” Keith Buterbaugh from Company can actually make up words that rhyme when he forgets lyrics. That makes me mad. No one should be able to think that fast.

The hardest part of opening night was that up to that point, we had not had an audience. In this intimate space, when the audience is present, they are literally two feet away from you. Even though I am known for having a boisterous personality, I get very shy when I am singing right on TOP of someone. Now if they were a participatory audience and I was making a choice to sit in their laps, like I did for the Gala at MTC recently, that would’ve been something else. A different kind of “intimate”. But since they were just sitting there watching me….ooooooh that was scary. I came out to do my first number, started to sing, and even though I had taken out my contacts so I couldn’t see faces, I could still tell that there was a blob representing a person, sitting two feet from me. And that there were a bunch of blobs all around me. The usually peppy Kristin, became very shy and quiet. Make a note of it because you will never see it again. I was singing a sad song, so it worked okay. It was just very quiet.

Luckily, as the show went on to the next number I became more used to singing in their faces, and since many of the next songs were funny, I found my wings. I didn’t think Rob sounded nervous at all, but he said his reaction was the opposite of mine. He tried to sing out more. That makes me laugh because he is really the quieter one in our offstage relationship.

What is actually great about this intimate space is that it truly is like having a few friends over in your living room and telling them about your life. They don’t get to comment back, but they can become involved with us in a way that they really can’t in a theatre with a stage that is a few feet off the ground with the audience starting about 20 feet away. We actors tend to feel “safe” in the light and with people at a distance. There are little things we can get away with. Like talking under our breath, or rolling our eyes, or making some gesture that would tell the pianist that we were going too slowly, or just falling out of character a bit. Wait, who does that? No one I know. Anyway. In this space, we feel exposed. Naked. Some folks may love that feeling, but the thought of exposing myself on a topless beach while everyone else has clothes on is not my idea of fun. Ironically their laugher made me relax. Freud must have something to say about that.

By the second show, though, I was calm and ready to face all the clothed people. It was as if a switch had been flipped in my brain. I knew I had gotten through the entire show intact and that I would be fine now. Kevin asked us if we wanted to know when the “Press” coming to the show to review it. I asked him not to tell me. I also threw in that he should be sure not to let me know when “stars” were in the audience. Like Glenn Close and Brad Pitt. They are just such big fans of mine it’s hard to keep them away. I don’t want to see them, or the press, in the audience because it might flip my ‘nervous’ switch again.

Having said that, in our second show I became aware of a critic in the front row. I became aware of her because she had her pad and pencil and was writing while we were performing. That is not unusual for critics because they have to remember what they want to highlight from the show, but with a front row being right on top of us, it was little hard not to notice her. She was using the light from the stage to write, and not a penlight luckily, by tilting the white paper toward us so she could see. I could see too. If I had had my contacts in I would have been able to read what she was writing.

As I was reading, I mean, singing my first song, I tried hard to stay in the moment, but also wondered what the dip of her head and scratching pen meant as I sang the angrier part of the first song. In this show I do an ‘audition’ sequence where I voice my stressful subtext. The subtext for my first song “I’m still hurting” became, “Jamie is over and… what is she writing about me? Jamie’s decided…did she hate what I just did there? Jamie has new….is she spelling my name right? And I’m still….right on top of her.” I made a conscious choice to block her out of my mind after I moved off of her lap, but that was just one more challenge of performing in this intimate space.

All in all this was a wonderful opening weekend with so many friends coming up from NY and CT to support us all. And even though the ‘exposure’ of working in this intimate space made me cringe at first, it also made me realize how much I have learned over the last couple of years working on Company. That show really drummed the “less is more” concept into our heads. If I had not learned so much from working on that piece I would never have been able to be so intimate in this show. Believe it or not, being ‘natural’ on stage is hard. Our true natural instincts in life are to ‘cover up’ or hide behind some public mask we present to the public. Some of us become actors because we want to hide behind the characters we portray. What I have learned these last couple years is that if you are doing it right, you are actually exposing yourself through the characters you play. On a big stage it is easy to only let a portion of yourself show. In the intimate space at MTC MainStage, you can’t get away with less than your entire, naked self.

Something about that is very freeing. But don’t expect me to show up at a nude beach any time soon.

March 31, 2008
PANIC MODE

”Ack!” I feel like I should start stories with an “Ack!” whenever I am in panic mode. It’s a different kind of panic than the “What do you mean I have to play three instruments and sing and act??” None-the-less, it is a full blown panic attack.

The Last Five Years, by Jason Robert Brown, has more lyrics than any two people were meant to sing. The songs are great, but they are also complex. It is easy to think you are at the end of a song only to find out you still have half it left to go. And you have no idea what the words are to that part of the song. Hence, panic mode.

My mother marvels at the way actors memorize “all those lines”. Until now I chuckled at that remark. But last night I woke up at 1am with heart palpitations because of the lyrics I still had to memorize for the song, “I can do better than that”. My unconscious was screaming, “NO, I don’t think you can!” There are just too many letters, too many words attached to too many notes. Mozart may have been able to tell his performers that there were just the right amount of notes needed in his scores and get away with it, but Mr. Brown, there are a few lyrics you might have left unwritten so that I could live up to my mother’s expectations. To those who are fans of every single line he wrote, I apologize but you aren’t the one on stage trying to remember them all!

My co-star, Rob, has a song that is almost nine minutes long. To his credit, he interprets the lyrics in a charmingly sexy way -- but it’s nine friggin’ minutes long. There is very little dialogue in this hour and fifteen-minute show, so whoever says: “Oh Doris, and I can’t sit through a nine minute song” should know that you would be missing the coolest Jewish Christmas song ever written. And consider how fun will it will be to watch Rob sweat over all nine hundred and seventy five words.

I am not making fun of him, because you reach a point as an actor where you just give in to the craziness of it all. You go with it and let something happen. That is when the “magic” occurs. We actually have had a few moments like that in our rehearsals. Matt is phenomenal on the piano and is, what Kevin calls, a “musical detective.” He finds all sorts of themes and motifs and musical ideas that connect up the acting moments for us. Plus, he has that wicked sense of humor that kept me going during our Company rehearsals. Kevin also has a good sense of humor but I wonder how hard he will be laughing when I stop the show to ask Matt for the lyrics to “Summer in Ohio”.

Today, as I left my hair stylist salon, I was so wrapped up in running my lines out loud that I wore home the smock she used to cover me and I didn’t even notice until my husband pointed it out to me two hours later! Even my dreams at night are filled with the show’s songs. I wouldn’t mind that if the osmosis thing worked and I could memorize them while I was sleeping. But no such luck. I woke up with the same holes in my brain.

We are all professionals who have our “if I can get through that I can do anything” stories in theatre. And this show is so wonderful and the cast and directors are so supportive that this doesn’t come close to any of our scary theatre stories. But to make things more challenging for me –as if memorizing five million words weren’t enough to tax my brain—this show is being stages so “Cathy” seems to remember all of these moments in her five year marriage to Jamie. In other words, she is living in the present and the past at the same time. Like going through therapy and reliving those moments that lead up to the mess you are now. Like the mess I will be on Opening Night if I can’t the room in my brain for a few more lines of music! But seriously folks, this is what we went to school to learn. This is the “craft” of this business. Somewhere along the line they taught us to be overly dramatic about our panic moments. But that only really exists because we want to please you. When you come to the show, remember that we have invited you into our ‘living room’ to see a slice of our lives. Since this show is about relationships, it’s a slice of your life too. I need to remember that too.

“Ack!” More responsibility. More words. More work. More panic.

With all the things I have to remember now I’ll be lucky on Opening night if I can remember to put on underwear.

March 19, 2008
TRADING HUSBANDS

Getting a new husband every so often can actually be fun. I have had four this year. My real one, Andy, Keith Buterbaugh, my “Harry” in Company, the understudy for “Harry”, Dave Garry, and today I met my new ‘husband’ for the show, The Last Five Years, Rob Sutton. Any woman will tell you that when you get a new husband, your job, as wife, is to flatter and train them early on. Today was “photo shoot/radio interview” day at MTC MainStage, an intimate theatre in Westport, CT …and our first encounter as a ‘couple’.

Adorable Rob is from Beauty and the Beast on Broadway and the Vegas production of Mamma Mia. There is a third degree of separation with us because Rob knows Matt Castle, (Company) and coincidentally our music director for this show, and of course, Matt knows me. Small theatre world, isn’t it? After greeting each other and finding that Matt had already ‘filled him in on me” I realized I was at a small disadvantage. If this had been a real “blind date” I would have had a bit more info on my new man. Of course if this had been a real blind date, we also wouldn’t be “married” already.

Our photo session was quick, early in the day, and we all laughed a lot. Kevin Connors, the director, has been a friend of mine for a few years now and I have done a few shows with him including a fun Babes in Toyland where I got to play a karate-kicking Red Riding hood and a funky Fairy Queen. Funny how karate seems to work it’s way into many of my recent roles.

Since I know Kevin well I don’t see the need to hold back on much so during our photo shoot, while we were laughing and joking, I made sure to check in with my new hubby to see if he was getting into the swing. Rob, fit right in and he seemed to be having a good time. We got off to a great start with some serious “duet” poses. Then we did our solo poses. I have witnesses to the fact that Kevin’s direction to me was, “Ok now just do something kinda goofy”. People should never say that to me. I started out slowly and built up to pulling one of my ‘cutlets’ (fake boobs) out of my bra. While Rob laughed I could see a bit of trepidation creep into his face. Kevin made that comment I hear often from folks who have ‘warned’ their friends about my humor, “SEE…” I take that to mean, SEE what an odd duck she is. SEE what strange things come out of her mouth. SEE what I meant about her ‘energy’ level. He could really just have meant….SEE what you will be dealing with for four weeks?

After the shoot we headed to the radio station, WICC in Bridgeport. David Smith, a cool radio guy, interviewed us. Rob told me he usually gets pretty nervous for this type of things. He explained to me why. One time, when he was playing the “Prince” in Into the Woods, the interviewer asked him why he thought he was hired to play that part and a flustered Rob said “Because….I am pretty…and male”. Since he is so modest I had to laugh at that one. I also told him I would try to work that into our interview. He thought I was joking. Ah ha! Something he was not warned about at last! I don’t really have any trouble chit chatting on the air. My mom calls it the gift of gab, but I just like having fun and promoting things I love, like theatre.

Cool radio dude, David, asked great questions and we all had great answers. Rob did super and I began to think he was just a tad too comfortable given what he told me earlier. Plus we were still on our ‘blind date’ as a married couple so… true to my word, when I was asked why people should come to see our show, I told all the folks listening on the radio that they should see The Last Five Years because I had just met my new ‘husband’ and he was sooo pretty…and really male. As Rob turned beet red, I explained that we all know it’s the wives who get their husbands to the theatre. And this show has an almost cult like following with young women.

In the end, I thought this answer killed three birds with one stone. It fulfilled the “flattery” aspect of our relationship. It made him laugh and relax, thus training him with the idea that this would be a fun trip and… I also thought it was a good bit of advertising for the show.

And to tell the truth, you really should see this show if for no other reason than…my new husband ….he really is pretty… and very male.

LINK: Click here to listen to the WICC interview at the MTC MainStage MySpace page

April 3, 2008 from Middletown Press
Kristin Huffman: A Woman for All Seasons
by Bonnie Goldberg

Kristin Huffman is a master at multi-tasking. She is an actress, but that that grazes the tip top of her personal iceberg of talents. On her resume of achievements, she grew up in a singing family that performed all over Ohio, abandoning her tomboy status to win Miss Ohio and be a runner-up for Miss America, along the way. She calls her experience competing in the beauty and talent contest her “finishing school,” a stressful time when she adopted a platform of volunteer and charitable activities to perform.

Her love for charities and doing good for others continues to this day as she performs in fundraisers that help breast cancer, Alzheimer's and AIDS. Kristin also stages Slam/Glam, workshops to help actors learn how to dress for success, with outfits, make-up and hairstyle tips, classes that can be adapted to aid women wishing to be more beautiful and stronger, called Powerful Image.”

For fifteen years, she has been a vocal and piano teacher, and has given master classes in preparation for theater students. Her dream of performing on Broadway became a reality recently when she took on the role of Sarah in “Company,” which involved playing the flute, the sax and the piccolo, in addition to acting and singing, no small feat. Her experience in the role has been captured in a series of columns she has written for Broadwayworld.com in a blog entitled Actorquest.

The column follows her experiences through auditions and rehearsals and performances she calls “A Funny thing Happened on the Way to Broadway.” Kristin began writing the pieces years ago for family and friends, to keep them informed about the numerous strange and humorous things that happened in her life. They turned out to be therapy for her, to overcome her angst, and were also helpful for fellow actors in the show business world who were struggling to stay optimistic. She describes the articles as “me going WOW” about the amazing things that seemed to happen to her every week. One story spoke to her trauma when her beloved flute, her “soul mate,” was knocked off the piano during a performance of “Company” and a piece broke off, yet she had to continue to play, while another story spoke to the hammerlock positions she and her co-star found themselves in during a photo shoot for posters for “Company.” Her weekly columns will include her newest theater venture in Connecticut.

In addition to teaching and writing, Kristin has performed operas, symphonies and theater, all over the United States, as well as a European tour of “Phantom of the Opera.” Her favorite roles include Meg in “Brigadoon,” Gooch in “Mame,” Grace in “Annie,” Maria in “The Sound of Music,” Nellie in “South Pacific,” and Anna in “The King and I.” She enjoys playing women who are quirky and funny, with a lot of humor and vulnerability. She has gotten what she asked for as she was recently cast as Cathy in “The Last Five Years” with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and direction by Kevin Connors at Music Theatre of Connecticut, April 4-13, in the intimate space at 246 Post Road East, lower level of Colonial Green, Westport.

Kristin will play Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress, married to Jamie Wellerstein, a rising star of a novelist, portrayed by Rob Sutton. This bittersweet musical is about two New Yorkers who fall in and out of love over five years, looking forward and backward at what happened to their relationship. She describes her Cathy character as loyal and needy, who identifies her self-worth by Jamie’s level of success. As to the music, she calls it “the coolest ever, contemporary, with a million different styles.” She especially identifies with a song she sings about auditioning that has lots of subtexts in the middle of the play, a “been there, done that” moment.

For tickets ($35), call MTC at 203-454-3883 or online at www.MTCMainStage.org. Performances are Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. An opening night party will follow the Saturday, 8 p.m., performance on April 5 with additional pricing.
In the future, Kristin Huffman would like to play Velma Von Tussell in “Hairspray” or create herself anew in a role yet to be written. Meanwhile, she has a lot on her plate: teaching piano and vocal students at Hartt School, at the University of Hartford, and the Performing Arts Center of Connecticut, giving Slam/Glam workshops and Powerful Image seminars, writing a weekly column for Broadwayworld.com, that will now be on Stephen Sonheim’s site The Sonheim Society, being married for seventeen years to her landscape architect husband and helping him with his internet franchise business, conducting theater master classes, participating in charity fundraisers and, of course, being an actress who is both funny and vulnerable and occasionally sings while playing the piano, sax, piccolo and flute. Over-achiever must be Kristin Huffman’s middle name.

"The Last Five Years" at MTC MainStage MySpace

Jason Robert Brown's Official Website

"The Last Five Years" at YouTube

Jason Robert Brown at YouTube

"The Last Five Years" at Music Theatre International