Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years would be an attractive and over-produced chamber musical were it not so damned clever: It requires its audience to think, balance, recall, and appreciate its ironic “backwards for her/forwards for him” structure. It has been successfully produced twice in the Valley over the past two seasons. Now North Valley Playhouse brings us its take on this intriguing work in a production that is directed, both literally and musically; scenic-, lighting-, costume-, and properties designed; and pretty much in almost every other way completely wrought by the newlywed team of David A. and Heather Lucas, Vice-President and Treasurer respectively of NVP. They have brought a different spin to the piece, changing the evening from a two-person to a four-person musical.

The Lucases have asked their two leads (Kendra Ryan as Catherine Hiatt and Aaron Vander Yacht as Jamie Wellerstein) to share the stage with two non-speaking ensemble members (John Bellian and Emily Marie Holly). I am often accused of being a purist because as a playwright, I am leery when companies tinker with an established work. However, when it sheds a new light on a script or expands its or the audience’s comprehension, then I am a big supporter. In this case, including these two unnecessary performers does nothing but flatten the show, making it much more literal and easier for the audience to handle without having to do a lot of the thinking that Brown has built into the evening. Their inexplicable inclusion, along with a questionable casting choice and what appears to be some pretty basic sloppiness in directing choices undercut what could be an otherwise worthwhile production.

Do we really need to see Schmuel, the tailor of Klimovich that Jamie sings about in one of his offerings midway through the show? It’s the only time we see Bellian, and it allows the audience to focus less on Vander Yacht’s attempt at bolstering Ryan’s Cathy and more on the literal images of the story. Especially since Bellian mouths the lines created for him by Jamie, it seems a total waste to ask an actor to sit backstage throughout a run to do pretty much nothing. Holly does have a few more activities, running from waitress through ministress to mistress, but the characters are just as easily left to the imagination as they are made real. At best, the choice to add them feels like a wash, and at worst, it appears to sell the audience short by guiding them through the play’s lovely complications.

On a positive note, Ryan appears custom-fit for the role of Catherine. Her cherubic face, strong acting choices, and belting chest voice make her character fill the space and draw our empathy. However, Vander Yacht doesn’t connect with Ryan on pretty much any level. He is too young for the role and does not believably present the character’s arc from up-and-coming novelist to jaded realist. He has a very nice voice and is charismatic, but it’s hard to buy him as a brilliant writer, a man in love, or a Jew (especially when wearing what appears to be a crucifix on a necklace).

Probably the most aggravating part of the evening for those who know the musical is what appears to be sloppiness on the part of the directors in setting up the intricate sequence of the events. Since the play explores the five years of a passionate but ultimately doomed relationship using two different chronologies, each scene links up when you make the effort to note what’s happening at simultaneous times. A scene set on a river has moments at the beginning and end of the play, but they appear not to have been tracked by the directors, leaving the first of the scenes correctly set by the river, but the later scene has Cathy and Jamie at home with her in a bathrobe. I can’t tell for sure if this was a non-choice or a mistake. It might explain why the ensemble was added, making something clear that was in reality unclear to the directors.