Six the Musical review: ‘the brightest, funniest, and most empowering show in town’

Rebellious royals are all the rage right now, what with Harry and Meghan airing their grievances across hours of Netflix bandwidth and the self-proclaimed ‘spare’ sparing no details in his tell-all biography.

I’m not getting into whether the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are right to rant and rave here, but the Queens in Six the Musical are more than justified in their disdain for a monarch who either divorced them (Catherine of Aragon, Anna of Cleves), had them beheaded (Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard) or saw them die after childbirth (Jane Seymour).

Catherine Parr was lucky; she outlived Henry VIII. But she was in love with someone else, namely Henry’s brother-in-law Thomas Seymour, and history often relegates her to something of a footnote.

Six is far from a footnote in theatrical history, it’s a sensation. It premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 and hit the West End later that year, followed by a UK tour in 2018, a triumphant return to the West End, and a move from the Lyric Theatre to the Vaudeville in 2021.

It’s been a permanent fixture at the Vaudeville ever since (not to mention a mainstay on Broadway) and now there’s a new bunch of Queens in town, who this week opened as a sextet to the sort of thunderous applause usually reserved for rockstars.

A couple of them have done the show already, the rest are newbies, and they’re all so brilliant they constitute probably the strongest ensemble the show has ever had. So let’s bow or curtsey to all of them: Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky (Aragon), Baylie Carson (Boleyn), Claudia Kariuki (Seymour), Dionne Ward-Anderson (Cleves), Koko Basigara (Howard) and Roxanne Couch (Parr).

Henry’s shoddily-treated spouses aren’t the most obvious subjects for an ultimately uplifting musical that celebrates sisterhood and solidarity – yet with Six writers and composers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss have fashioned exactly that, the genius twist being to stage it as a girlband gig where they bitch and bicker, laying claim to being the most fabulous or the worst-done-to before forging a girl power bond.

Think the Spice Girls circa the mid-1500s or Girls Aloud kitted out in costumes totemically designed (by Gabriella Slade) to represent such era-specific references as Tudor housing, gold as a status symbol, and the green sleeves of the folk song that Henry supposedly penned about Anne Boleyn.

Said ‘Greensleeves’ song can’t hold a torch to a terrific score that features full-throated balladry, thumping techno, bubblegum pop, and feminist anthems. And the new line-up seize every big note, comical lyric, and bit of between-song banter.

They’re the perfect six in what remains the brightest, funniest, and most empowering show in town.

Rating: 5/5

Six the Musical is at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, until 19 February. Get tickets here.