love lost

Just last night, I attended a musical unlike any I have ever seen. Titled "The Last Five Years", it dealt with love found and love lost. The playwright approached this common enough theme in a most unusual manner, using time and perception to examine the theme. Here's how it went: in each scene, the two characters interact, but are out of synchronicity with the event at hand. For the male, time progressed forward, from the moment of first love to the end of the relationship. For the female, time passes in reverse, allowing us a vision of the end in the opening scene of the play.
Quite a different approach to exploration of the interactions of men and women. This is a fairly new play, having its debut in 2001, a scant decade ago. It is also set in the modern day, rather than some other time frame.
But, the most unusual part of this theatrical work is this: it is a musical. Yes, you read that correctly - a MUSICAL! I have loved musicals since I was a girl, whether they are tragic or light or inane, so this drew my attention right away. I had deliberately not read any reviews or history of the play, so it could present itself to me unshaded by the bias of others. And I completely enjoyed it, though it was terribly sad on occasion. I know I will go to this play in the future, when some other theatre puts on the show and it'll be interesting to see how my knowledge of its workings will alter my interpretation. Theatre is such a LIVE creature, mutating with its players into a slightly different beast with each outing!