"The Last Five Years" by Jason Robert Brown explores the five-year relationship between Jamie Wellerstein, a rising novelist, and Cathy Hiatt, a struggling actress. The narrative unfolds through a unique storytelling device: Cathy’s perspective starts at the end of their marriage and moves backward in time, while Jamie's perspective begins at the start of their relationship and moves forward. Their stories intersect only once, at their wedding. It is a fantastic show that debuted in 2001 and was made into a movie musical in 2014.
The show has two songs that are great at illustrating economic lessons: The Schmuel Song and A Summer in Ohio
The Schmuel Song Teaches about Short Run vs. Long Run Tradeoffs
Before he will give Cathy her Christmas present, Jamie wants to tell her the story of Schmuel, the “tailor of Klimovich”. Schmuel works long hours every day just to keep up with the day-to-day operations of his business. He has a dream of producing a fantastic dress that will fire “the mad desires” of women everywhere. But he is too busy. That is, until a talking clock convinces him that if he starts to produce the dress, the time will appear – which it magically does! The clock says “Oh Schmuel, you'll get to be happy … I give you unlimited time”. With this time, Schmuel goes after his dream, produces the dress, and it turns out to be as fantastic and life-changing as he was hoping.
“The Schmuel Song” song does a great job at illustrating short run vs. long run trade-offs. Schmuel had a long-term dream, but the day-to-day operations of his business prevented him from pursuing it. Learn a bit more about these cases in real life through this video
A Summer in Ohio Teaches Opportunity Costs
What could possibly be better than a summer in Ohio? Well, lots of things if you’re Cathy from the musical The Last Five Years. Cathy is now an actress, and the summer, according to her, is not going well. This is because she is sharing a room with a former stripper and her snake, the best role she finds is opposite a midget named Karl, and she is suffering from a lack of hot water and cable TV. Yet, she is enduring these hardships to pursue her dream of being an actor.
This song does a great job illustrating the trade-offs Cathy incurs for pursuing her dream of an acting career, check it out here:
For more lessons, check out this video
Overall, this musical is great and I recommend you check it out. (It can be streamed on several streaming services.) The lessons are great and there are more I haven’t commented on yet - check them out in this video: