“The Last Five Years” tells a story as old as time: Girl loses boy. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl get married. Girl meets boy. Boy loses girl. That is roughly the cockeyed kind of clock composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown uses for his beautifully bittersweet little musical about a love affair that cannot pass the test of time.

The opposite-day approach keeps the romance alive in MusicalFare’s breakup-without-a-makeup charmer. The show opens with Cathie, packing up at the end of the relationship. Her story moves in reverse, alternating with Jamie’s, which is told from beginning to end. (Knowing that structure ahead of time really helps.)

The love story is enhanced exponentially by the talents of its stars, Steve and Kelly Copps, whose own romance started at MusicalFare several years ago. Steve gives Jamie, a fledgling author, a very non-bookish energy, while Kelly’s Cathie is doggedly pushing to break into musical theater. They each see the other as one dream that has come true. 

There’s nothing earthshaking about their next, and last, five years. The magic here is in the telling, and how this creative teams tells it.  They pack a ridiculous number of highlights into a fast 90 minutes. For instance:

• Kelly Copps nervously pushing Cathie through audition after audition, waiting for a call-back.
• Steve Copps flinging himself around the stage as lovestruck Jamie during a raucous rendition of the fabulistic ‘The Schmuel Song.”
• Kelly breaking her heart right in front of when Cathie’s worst fears come true.
• Steve’s split-second mimicry at the mention of Mr. Ed, the talking horse.
• Kelly glowing with happiness when Cathie finds true love at last, or at first.
• Steve fearlessly making the audience turn on him when he decides his world with Cathie is not enough.
• And seeing real-life photos of the couple’s early years together, as part of the opening backdrop (thanks to designer Chris Cavanagh).

Presenting the show in MusicalFare’s Cabaret heightens its emotional impact, with the audience side-by-side with Cathie and Jamie in the rooms where everything happens. And those rooms become farther and farther apart, about as far as small-town Ohio is from the Manhattan publishing world. 

The two only share the stage briefly before the finale, for a wedding scene. It’s an interesting theatrical device. Each solo number is a window into thoughts and feelings that the audience interprets on its own, without gauging their reactions against the response of anyone else onstage. We’re paying close attention, and it makes you wonder when these young lovers stopped listening to each another. It also makes it clear that, when the music stops, they will be moving on to separate stories. 

Brown keeps us caring by using a full arc of musical styles, with intricate lyrics full of light and dark moments, just like life, to produce a narrative that is as rich as it is sad.

Director Eric Deeb Weaver reads that intention well and his actors play it with nuanced sensibilities.

Music was provided by the always reliable Theresa Quinn, Larry Albert and Jay Wollin, who also play “the band” for Cathie’s awkward auditions. The result leaves us hoping MusicalFare will find a way to continue its cabarets next season and beyond when it makes its move from Daemen University to the big stage at 710 Main. 

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“The Last Five Years” continues through Jan. 26 at MusicalFare Theatre, 4380 Main St., Amherst, with performances at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $45 at musicalfare.com. Arrive a little early for table service, as there is no intermission.