The history re-told comedy-musical that continues to set the West End alight
Starting out at Edinburgh Fringe, written by Cambridge peers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, Six has grown to become a global phenomenon, currently showing on Broadway, and Toronto, and tours of the UK, the US, and Europe, and Australia. A recent change of line up for the ‘Queendom’, as they refer to themselves, puts Six on its fifth West End cast.
The life of King Henry VIII and his six wives has been covered across classrooms, history books, and the performing arts countless times over centuries. Six sets out with its banners of Modern Feminism to reclaim the stories of those Queens back from the narratives written by the men who treated them like chess pieces all those years ago.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that being in an on-stage history lesson and dedicating itself to a righteous cause, Six might be a high brow intellectual watch. While it does a good job of giving us a different view down a well trodden path, it’s the script, songs, set and costume that make it a truly fun show.
We start with Six Queens introducing themselves, and why we’re here. They playfully address the audience in the manner musicians would address their fans in the crowd to declare that tonight, united together in pop purgatory, they’re going to decide once and for all: ‘Which one of us had it the worst?’ The dynamic between the Queens on stage is reminiscent of rival siblings, they tease and bicker with each other to provide a light hearted atmosphere with well timed gags that offer consistent, gentle laughs.
Each of the Queens is given a distinct personality, and this is reflected well in the casting – the actors all play their parts exceptionally well, and are inseparable in quality of performance. The show avoids falling into the trap of retelling the same story six times with slightly modified endings. A springboard to this is that each of the six are shrewdly based on a modern female pop star. As each Queen takes centre stage to lead a number that serves as the post-mortem of their life, the performances feel unique, and their stories feel like theirs alone. It’s hard to single out a song or performance, they do all combine to become greater than the sum of their parts, but as I write this I can’t get Thao Therese Nguyen’s Anne Boleyn number ‘Don’t Lose Ur Head’ out of my mind, which takes Avril Lavigne chords and tempo and blends them with Lily Allen style lyrics.
Six tries to do lots of things at once, it balances being informative, empowering, funny, and playful. It does all of these things well, all without ever taking itself too seriously. It doesn’t swerve necessary historical context to what it deems significant developments in its characters lives. You will be introduced to people you’ve never heard of through stories in songs, because these people are important to the lives of our Queens. But it chooses to not dedicate itself too deeply to serious rhetoric or debate, which may have made for a compelling story, but could easily have detracted from the humour or made the script feel more laboured. The goal of Six is for the audience to have a good time, and it achieves that very well.