Broadway is back at it with SIX, finally opening after having its run cut short on opening night in March of 2020. But what’s another 18 months after the 500-ish years these ladies have waited for this epic throw down? Featuring six powerhouse performers spilling the queen’s side of the story (and just overflowing with talent and personality), SIX delivers an 80-minute experience that lives somewhere between musical theatre, arena concert, and TikTok. Reviewers caution audiences to leave their heads at home for this one – it’s a bit divorced from history, to say the least – but come for the clever bits, come for the girl power, and come because this is the most fun you will have had in 18 months, if not a helluva lot longer.
New York Times Review of Six
In “Six,” the queenhood-is-powerful pageant about the wives of Henry VIII that took a bow — finally! — at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on Sunday evening, Tudor London is the place to be if you’re looking for a sextet of truly empowered, empowering megastars. … somehow “Six,” by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, isn’t a philosophically incoherent jumble; it’s a rollicking, reverberant blast from the past. I don’t just mean that it’s loud, though it is; … I also mean that though gleefully anachronistic, mixing 16th-century marital politics with 21st-century selfies and shade, it suggests a surprising, disturbing and ultimately hopeful commonality. Which shouldn’t work, but does.
TimeOut Review of Six
Who doesn’t enjoy a royal wedding? The zingy Broadway musical Six celebrates, in boisterous fashion, the union of English dynastic history and modern pop music. On a mock concert stage, backed by an all-female band, the six wives of the 16th-century monarch Henry VIII air their grievances in song, and most of them have plenty to complain about: two were beheaded, two were divorced, one died soon after childbirth. In this self-described “histo-remix,” members of the long-suffering sextet spin their pain into bops; the queens sing their heads off and the audience loses its mind.
Vulture Review of Six
The key to Six’s pleasure — as directed by Moss and Jamie Armitage — is its smallness, not its obvious and delightful maximalism. The show may look like a Katy Perry show minus the fireworks on the bustier, but it still contains a Fringe-y, college-y confidence, as if it needs to amuse a house of about 50 people, mostly your mates, who all get your references. The thing feels intimate, private-jokey, for-the-squad. … So let the cares of this world roll away. Heck, let the cares of 16th-century England dissolve. This is one liberation in which you don’t have to lift a finger. Queens are doing it for themselves.
Variety Review of Six
Strutting strong, arms akimbo and ready for a royal rumble, the sextet of cheeky spouses of King Henry VIII take to the stage in triumph — not just over the much-married monarch who did them wrong, but also in celebration of the deferred Broadway bow of the musical “Six,” shut down by the pandemic last year just hours before its scheduled opening night. … Historians might take issue at this decision to shift spotlight away from the crown, and others might dismiss the concert format of the musical as easy entertainment pickings. Still, there’s much to admire and love. It may not be Masterpiece Theater, but this “Six” is a solid “10” for joy.
Broadway Musical Blog 