Review: Six the Musical isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
Book, lyrics and music by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage, Australian Associate Director Sharon Millerchip
In what started as an Edinburgh Fringe Festival student project all the way back in 2017, Six the Musical has taken the world by storm via TikTok, Broadway and sell-out seasons across Australia. Returning from their Melbourne Comedy Theatre run and now in Sydney for the third time at the Theatre Royal, if you haven't at least heard about Six it's safe to say you've been living under a bit of a rock. I emerged from under my own proverbial rock on Wednesday’s opening night and witnessed the musical for myself. I had every intention of loving this musical, having listened to the upbeat hits on a recent road trip with friends, and heard snippets of the pop royalty all over my For You page. Unfortunately, despite all the undeniable talent of the Australian Queens, it just didn't live up to the hype.
Lauded by critics across the world as the feminist equivalent to Hamilton, the premise of Six is that this is the long-awaited chance for Henry VIII's six wives to tell their own stories beyond the famous pneumonic. The show opens with this - divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. But now, the queens are “live” and ready to break free from the historical shackles tying them to their infamous husband.
The vision is clear, with glitzy Tudor-esque costumes by Gabriella Slade and musical inspirations from pop Queens Ariana, Beyonce, and Shakira bringing tight opportunities for the cast and all-female band to showcase their talents. Choreography by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille and International Associate Choreographer Freya Sands is similarly tight, punchy, and fun. Set design by Emma Bailey is clever, creating a bit of a pop church of sorts complete with digital stained-glass windows. The Australian cast are fantastic; Kala Gare as Boleyn is a hilariously effervescent scene-stealer, and Vidya Makan as Catherine Parr is an absolute star.
Where Six falls down is in its claim to retell or interrogate the typical portrayals of Henry VIII’s wives. In the opening ‘Ex-Wives’, the queens sing “tonight we’re going to do ourselves justice”. This is a huge claim that is never fully delivered, particularly because the main plot driver is a competition that pits the queens against each other to see who suffered the most at the hands of their husband. This inevitably leads to quips like “I broke England from the Church, yeah I’m that sexy,” or “don’t be bitter, cause I’m fitter” (both from Anne Boleyn, typically portrayed as a scheming crown-stealer, and not much different here) that seriously downplay the complexity of the situations each woman found themselves in. Then, in the final song Catherine Parr changes the tone and laments that “it would have been really cool if we reclaimed our stories”, as if that weren’t the task all along.
Before you say I’m expecting too much from my musical theatre, not far away in the Sydney Opera House Fangirls, Yve Blake’s sugary pop musical, delivers on its promise to show you young women in a new, feminist, euphoric light every night. The key difference is that Fangirls subverts expectations by using the hysterical fan girl stereotype as a starting point for exploring what makes them human, giving them their own voice and embedding us firmly inside their hormonal, emotional brains.
Six limits itself at 75 minutes and spends a lot of that time establishing each of the Queens’ characters by casting them as “sexy”, or “soft and loving”, or “not as pretty as their profile pictures”, and not the intelligent, political and complex beings they were in Henry VIII’s court. Perhaps this is because Six became a sensation at such a young point in its development, which somewhat prevented it from growing into something deeper than what is essentially the trailer for a musical. The final number ‘Six’ has the beginnings of a “new” story for the Queens, but this is limited to jokes about Anna of Cleves teaching her hometown friends how to party, Boleyn writing lyrics for “Shakesy-P” and Katherine Howard embracing her singing career. That’s not to say these aren’t valid alternative fates for the Queens, I just wish I saw more of them than throwaway jokes.
With some undeniably amazing musical moments and a brilliantly talented cast, it’s no wonder Six has become a worldwide sensation. A sparkly, shiny vision of feminism that is endlessly marketable, it never achieves the empowerment, complexity and freedom it sets out to. Go see Fangirls at the Opera House instead.
