SIX the musical
In this high-energy 80-minute musical experience, the six Tudor queens of Henry the VIII rewrite 500 years of history!
Inspiration struck Toby Marlow during a comparative poetry class at Cambridge University in Autumn 2016. Participating in a discussion on William Blake, he found his mind wandering and began scribbling a series of unrelated notes: “Henry VIII’s wives → like a girl group … Need Lucy!!”
Lucy Moss agreed to help with the idea, and together they wrote the two Tony award-winning musical SIX. A cast soundtrack was released in 2018, hitting TikTok by storm. It premiered on London's West End in 2019, and had its Broadway debut in February 2020. It is now performed in Australia, North America, Britain, and even on cruise ships.
The musical covers the life and times of Henry VIII's six wives, in a fresh feminist perspective. It is a historically accurate musical, but it does take artistic liberties in the portrayal of the characters. The premise is that each of the wives have met up to form a singing group, but they can't choose who should be the leader, so the queens decide to have a competition to see who has been dealt the worst hand. Each character performs a solo piece, and the queen with the most suffering is voted as the leader.
Scroll down for a detailed explanation of each queen.
Catherine of Aragon was the first of Henry's six wives, and she performs a Beyoncé/Jlo - inspired pop anthem titled "No Way". The first verse of the song highlights how Aragorn was aware of Henry's mistresses, but kept quiet; "had my golden rule/gotta keep my cool". The second verse explores Aragorn's refusal to divorce from Henry, to protect her daughter Mary's rights, including lines like "you must think that I'm crazy/you wanna replace me".
Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, is probably the most well-known in pop culture today, due to her love match with Henry and the scandalous beheading that has inspired many books and films. Boleyn (based on Lily Allen) performs a high-energy song called "Don't Lose Ur head". This is a reference to her beheading, by a sword. She is portrayed as a slightly frivolous, manipulated girl who is simply, according to the song, "just tryna have some fun".
Jane Seymour, the third wife, sings a heart-wrenching Adele-like ballad about her love for Henry. Historians describe her as Henry's perfect wife - meek, docile, and bearing a son. In the song (titled "Heart of Stone"), she acknowledges that "without my son/your love could disappear", and she is portrayed as a very tragic figure, due to her death in childbirth and the genuine love she had with Henry. Multiple times during the musical she is mentioned as "the only one he truly loved".
Anne of Cleves is supposedly the most successful of the queens. She outlived Henry and all his wives by a decade, not to mention to the considerable amount of properties, jewels, and dresses she owned. Cleves is based on Rihanna, and her song ("Get Down") is basically a big brag about how much money she fell into after divorcing Henry; "Now I ain't saying I'm a gold digger/but check my prenup and go figure". She is also the "raddest" of the queens, and instead of hiding her disgraced portrait she "hang[s] it up for everyone to see".
Henry's fifth wife was Katherine Howard. Howard was based on multiple pop singers that were sexualised at young ages such as Britney Spears, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus. "All You Wanna Do" is her solo song, and it begins as a catchy, seductive tune listing all her previous suitors, but by the end of the piece she realises they all have the same thing in mind. She is portrayed as a naïve, slightly arrogant teenager, (as she was around 17 at the time of her beheading) but with no clear agency over her own life.
Last but certainly not least, Catherine Parr. Her Alicia Keys-based performance, fittingly named "I Don't Need Your Love" highlights that Parr was a much more than Henry's sixth wife. She tells the audience to "remember I was a writer/I wrote books and psalms and meditations/Fought for female education". She refuses to be defined by her relationships, and at the end of the piece, invites the other queens to join her song. She single-handedly unites the queens, and they decide to sing in a group, without a clear leader.
Bibliography
Paulson, M. (2020). The Making of ‘Six’: How Tudor Queens Turned Into Pop Stars. The New York Times. [online] 27 Feb. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/theater/six-broadway.html?login=email&auth=login-email®ister=email&auth=register-email [Accessed 9 May 2024].
Solly, M. (2021). The true history behind ‘Six,’ the Tudor musical about Henry VIII’s wives. [online] Smithsonian Magazine. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-history-behind-six-the-musical-about-henry-viiis-wives-180978781/ [Accessed 9 May 2024].