A miracle has happened because The Last Five Years is finally coming to Broadway, starring Nick Jonas.
News broke on Sunday, June 16, that Jonas, 31, will lead a forthcoming revival of Jason Robert Brown’s musical. The show has never previously been mounted on a Broadway stage. Off-Broadway performances took place in 2001 and 2013, respectively, before Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick helmed a film adaptation in 2014.
Jonas, a Broadway veteran, will star as aspiring novelist Jamie. He will appear in the spring 2025 show opposite Tony Award winner Adrienne Warren, who’s also led Great White Way productions of Bring It On, Shuffle Along and Tina, as Cathy.
The Last Five Years will be directed by Whitney White, who previously helmed theatrical productions of 2023’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding and 2017’s Marvin’s Room. White is currently up for a 2024 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Jaja’s during Sunday’s awards ceremony. (Jonas and Warren, 37, have also been tasked to present during the 2024 Tonys.)
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The show, told in alternating chronological orders, follows Jamie and Cathy as they navigate the highs and lows of their New York-based relationship over the course of five years. Jamie narrates the sung-through performance from the beginning of the characters’ love story while Cathy starts at the end and looks back.
“I have always believed that when the time was right, The Last Five Years would make its way to Broadway,” composer Brown, 53, told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday. “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 twenty-five years, but the time is right.”
Further details about the production, including a specific opening night date, additional casting or Broadway house, have yet to be announced.
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The show is far from Jonas’ Broadway debut. Long before forming his Jonas Brothers band with siblings Joe Jonas and Kevin Jonas, Nick appeared in NYC stage productions of Les Misérables, Beauty and the Beast and Annie Get Your Gun. He returned to the stage in 2012, replacing Daniel Radcliffe in a revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. A decade later, Nick and his brothers debuted a limited residency at the Marquis Theatre in March 2023.
“Broadway is a first love of mine. Our Broadway residency was an incredibly unique and fulfilling experience,” Nick told Variety in June 2023. “I’m also working on musical theater ideas right now that are a long ways away from being ready to be on stage. But I’m definitely going to do something on the stage again. Even a straight play is an area of interest for me.”
