What do you know about the wives of Henry VIII? Their names, their eventual fates? Their solo numbers?
SIX tells the story of Catharine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr in the form of a girl group’s pop concert, moving the six queens out of time and space onto a brightly lit stage with their Ladies in Waiting: María on the drums, Bessie on bass, Maggie on guitar, and Joan on the keyboard. I didn’t realize this until after I read the wiki page, but these are not their real names; these are all references to real Ladies in Waiting from the Tudor era.
While the titular Six are somewhat friendly with each other, there is a heaping helping of catty comments, snarky banter, and a few near-misses with fiery tempers. The queens are competing with each other to see who “wins” the position of lead in the group using the basis of their relationship with Henry: who had it the worst? Each of them has their own song with the rest of the cast acting as backup singers/dancers. While they argue about whose song was best in between, during each number, they are completely committed, with no holding back to make anyone else look bad or making faces to indicate they doubt the sincerity of the current singer.
In a delightful intersection of special interests, SIX combines history with musicology, telling the story of each of the queens by giving them each their own style and song modeled after a modern pop artist. It’s more fun to watch and pick up the references yourself, but, for example, Katherine Howard. Katherine’s song All You Wanna Do takes a lot of stylistic inspiration from what creators Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow call “bubblegum pop”, naming Britney Spears and Ariana Grande specifically. As the youngest wife, the aesthetic fits her at a superficial level, but with a more thorough knowledge of Katherine’s life experiences, including her alleged affairs, Moss and Marlow subvert the genre and the references to these particular stars in ways that are jarring, emotional, and effective.
SIX is especially effective as a “gateway” musical for people who may not usually be into Broadway. First of all, its format requires very little buy-in/suspension of disbelief, with all music being diegetic and the plot being centered around the six characters performing a concert for the audience, which is acknowledged from the beginning. Additionally, this is a shorter format of play, only about an hour and a half long (no intermission if you see it live) and focuses more on music than dialogue, with very little cushion between musical numbers. The longest dialogues happen just after the opening number and just before the closing number. It really does work, in a lot of ways, more like a concert movie than a musical.
Some of SIX’s musical numbers could be slightly familiar, even to Broadway novices, as specific lines went viral as trends on social media in 2020 and 2021. Specifically, parts of Don’t Lose Your Head, Get Down, and All You Wanna Do, the last even having an edited version to repeat a specific line. This might not be a selling point if the person you’re trying to bring along found any of those trends particularly annoying…
What I liked about the pro-shot is that they took advantage of concert video production techniques, including incorporating shots from multiple vantage points in the audience throughout the show, capturing standing ovations, people getting up to dance, even catching glimpses of the stage through a phone screen now and then. They’re also able to work in the front-row shots that allow you to appreciate subtler expressions on the queens when they’re acting as backup singers during various numbers, and some more artistic shots, like the close-ups of each queen’s hand movement at the very beginning of the opening number.
I think the cinematography choice I liked best was that, during a moment where the queens are arguing and Catherine Parr wants to take a break and calm down, we actually switch from the “normal” pro-shot camera to a lower angle, lower resolution shot as the stage lights go down and the house lights are turned up, really selling the impression that the concert has been completely disrupted, this is unplanned, and that this will be a clip someone uploads to their social media later.
The pro-shot includes two additions that will be of particular interest to existing fans of the musical. Rather than opening with the musical itself, there’s a 10-15 minute featurette at the beginning with interviews of the cast as well as Moss and Marlow, talking about the 2018 West End production and UK tour, as well as reuniting for the 2022 performances that would be recorded for the film. Also included were discussions of other productions, including clips of the Broadway and Korean casts.
The other “extra” is the encore sung after the final number Six, which is not included in the album. Known as Megasix, this is an especially high-energy remix of all the solo numbers that ends again with the chorus of Six and includes a lot of exhortation for the audience to get up and dance! Easier said than done when your seat is reclined as far back as it will go.
Coming hot on the heels of Hadestown, when SIX The Musical Live! arrived in theaters August 14 with less overwhelming box-office totals: a modest $3 million compared to Hadestown’s record-breaking $10 million. It did have one big advantage.SIX premiered last spring in the United Kingdom and Australia, and began its opening weekend having already grossed over $8 million internationally.
Currently scheduled to leave theaters on August 23, SIX has a longer release than Hadestown was originally set to have before its opening weekend. With Hadestown finally retiring from screens after last weekend, will SIX do well enough that it will also see its release extended? Without that same explosive start, it seems unlikely, and we can only wait for it- wait for- that’s a completely different show!
FilmObserver Score: 8/10 – Excellent
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