Take Five

We can’t blame those folks who claim to hate musicals, considering the abundance of pop-culture pap that’s mashed up and wrung out to create glitzy yet thin tourist-trapping Broadway shows.

Local company Class 6 Theatre alleviates all of that with its interpretation of the off-Broadway hit The Last Five Years, which favors compelling characters over corporate entertainment properties. Class 6 opens its second season with Jason Robert Brown’s 2002 musical that explores the relationship between promising writer Jamie Wellerstein and struggling actor Cathy Hyatt. Inspired by Brown’s own failed marriage, The Last Five Years mirrors our human instinct to examine our extinguished romances forwards and backwards, giving us Jamie and Cathy’s respectively distinct perspectives from their first date to the final goodbye. Stirring songs like the opening “Still Hurting,” alongside the play’s unique story structure, make for more satisfying theater than, say, a singing donkey.

Wed., Oct. 13, 7:30 p.m.; Thu., Oct. 14, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Oct. 17, 2 p.m.; Wed., Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m.; Thu., Oct. 21, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 23, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Oct. 24, 2 p.m., 2010