It's been roughly a decade since the last time I wrote about a musical on this blog, but this feels like a special occasion. Seeing the touring version of "Six" was my first time back in a live theater space since before the pandemic. I purposely didn't listen to any of the songs and didn't look up any information about the show beforehand so I could go in fresh. All I knew was that "Six" was about the six wives of Henry VIII, and the rock star-inspired costuming was gorgeous.
Catherine of Aragon (Khaila Wilcoxon), Anne Boleyn (Storm Lever), Jane Seymor (Jasmine Forsberg), Anna of Cleves (Olivia Donalson), Katherine Howard (Didi Romero), and Catherine Parr (Gabrielle Carillo) relay their sad histories through song, arguing over who had it worst. Was it Catherine of Aragon, the rudely divorced first wife, who was married to Henry far longer than any of the others? Was it the famous Anne Boleyn, unable to produce an heir and beheaded on trumped up charges of infidelity? Was it Anne of Cleves, who was chosen based on her portrait, and dumped when Henry thought she didn't match the profile pic?
What immediately struck me about "Six" was its simplicity. The rock concert reimagining of history - or "histo-remix" - takes place on a minimalist set with six performers playing the queens, and four musicians, dubbed the "ladies in waiting." After a high energy opening number, each queen gets a biographical solo, there's a brief comic interlude, and then a grand finale. Nine songs and an intermission add up to roughly eighty minutes. I could definitely see the origins of "Six" as a student production, put together by creators Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss when they were attending Cambridge University. "Six" follows the lead of "Hamilton," using modern musical influences to invigorate its portrayals of the six queens. Each of them is patterned off of the personas of specific pop stars. Jane Seymour belts her power ballad like Adele, while Katherine Howard, the youngest queen, is reminiscent of teen sensations Britney Spears and Ariana Grande.
By giving the queens the larger-than-life personalities and modern quirks of contemporary singers, they're immediately very easy to root for and sympathize with. My favorites were Donalson as a vivacious Anne of Cleves, gleefully showing off her wealth and other assets, and Didi Romero as the flirty Katherine Howard, whose rumored promiscuity points to a much darker truth. As a group, the six queens behave like a pack of rivals - constantly sniping at each other and undercutting each other. They're quick with witty barbs, full of winking historical references for the academics in the audience, and online dating terminology and chatspeak for the youngsters. The contest for the worst sob story that serves as the loose framework for the show is probably the weakest part of "Six." It's inevitable that the queens will find empowerment and support through each other, and join forces to become a rock supergroup in the finale. Then again, this is the kind of show that demands a happy ending, and the only happy ending these ladies are going to get is through a contrived fantasy scenario.
"Six" has an admirable revisionist impulse, keen to rewrite the popular image of Henry's exes. It definitely succeeds in bringing more attention to the less famous wives like Howard and Parr, but there's so little time for each character that some of the queens get seriously shortchanged. Good luck following what happens to Anne Boleyn if you aren't already familiar with the events of her life. However, the songs are so catchy and the performers are so personable that I suspect it's inevitable that viewers will want to know more, and seek out more information on their own.
I'm not the best person to comment much about the music, but the rhyme schemes for the lyrics are clever, and several of the tunes are serious earworms. The density of the wordplay demands multiple replays - it's not nearly at the level of Lin Manuel Miranda's work, but the creators learned the right lessons from him. Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, full of death, infidelity, and bad marriages, "Six" is very light on its feet, very funny at times, and ferociously entertaining. I'm glad I braved the theater for it, and would absolutely go again, the next time it's in town.
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