As a birthday present this year, John and Jackie gave me tickets for Six the Musical. We went to see it the week before Christmas at the Palace Theater in Columbus.
Six the Musical is a pop-concert-style musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss that reimagines the six wives of Henry VIII. The six wives are a girl group competing to tell their stories and reclaim their narratives. The premise is that they are competing in telling their stories to show who had the most tragic life. As the musical goes on, the women stop letting their lives be defined by a man. Instead, they celebrate their individual identities. moving from a competition about who had the worst time to a celebration of their individual identities.
The show, which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017, has become a global sensation. It won a Tony Award for Best Original Score and earned critical acclaim for its modern, empowering take on history.
The musical begins with the line that Tom and I learned during our month in Great Britain: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. This refers to the way in which each of the women’s marriage to Henry ended. Each wife stars in a song about her life. The stories contained in the songs were surprisingly historically accurate. Marlow and Moss even brought in some of the controversies about the histories of each woman.
John and Jackie got us great seats for seeing the musical – up in the balcony. But the rows were so close together that John and I had our knees pressed hard against the seats in front of us. Fortunately the musical is fairly short – less than 90 minutes with no intermission. I really enjoyed the length which allowed the musical to explore the stories of the women without feeling like it dragged.
The music was fun and engaging, although I won’t be buying the songtrack or singing along. The entire show was very high energy with a pop band onstage with the six female leads.
Which wife of Henry VIII had the most tragic life? I will always think it was Catherine of Aragon, his first wife. She married him in good faith and then he changed all the rules on her. The other wives knew what they were getting into, but they were all manipulated by the men around them.
Seeing Six the Musical made me want to learn more about the wives of Henry VIII. Alison Weir is a historian who focuses on women during the Tudor period. She has written “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” which is a biography. Then she expanded on this book with historical novels on each wife. Each novel relies heavily on Weir’s excellent research.
If you haven’t seen Six the Musical, I recommend it if you have a chance. It was good history, very accessible, and lots of fun.