And I truly believe that when "The Medium" and "The Telephone" were done on Broadway, they were shows - even though they were sung-through shows.

In temperament this sung-through show is much like its stoical, uncompromising title character (Tonya Pinkins), a black maid for a Southern Jewish family in 1963.

Jason Robert Brown's new sung-through show, "The Last Five Years," directed by Daisy Prince and starring Sherie René Scott and Norbert Leo Butz, opens next Sunday Off Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theater.

The lyrics in this almost entirely sung-through show are by Mr. Boublil, Richard Maltby Jr. (who collaborated with Mr. Boublil and Mr. Schönberg on the book) and John Dempsey.

The two-character, sung-through show, produced last year by the Northlight Theater Company in Skokie, Ill., is an epitaph for the failed five-year marriage of Jamie and Cathy (Sherie René Scott), an actress whose career lags far behind her husband's.

The sung-through show, composed and directed by Ms. Swados, is performed without props or scenery in the eerily beautiful Majestic; the actors' shadows dancing on the walls resemble the figures in cave paintings.