Six, the biggest musical success story since Hamilton, is headlining Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival next year. Sam Brooks talks to the musical’s co-writers Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow about what makes the show so different, and why it works no matter where it goes.
“Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.”
You probably know those six words from your childhood as a way to remember how the wives of Henry VIII died, information that has never and likely never will be helpful to you. They’re also the words that open the award-winning, sell-out musical Six, which, you guessed it, follows the six wives of Henry VIII.
Six isn’t a musical like you’ve ever seen before. No, Six is a reimagining of history or more accurately, an establishment of herstory. It is closer to a girl group pop concert than it is to say, The Lion King. Throughout the show, the six wives of Henry VIII introduce themselves via song to establish exactly who had the worst experience. (Spoiler: It’s a photo finish.) Each wife takes inspiration from a popstar – Catherine of Aragon is a bit Beyoncé, a bit J. Lo while Katherine Howard is giving more Britney and Ariana.
The show, written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, finally comes to New Zealand after a once-in-an-era success. That Australian production is the one coming over next year to headline Auckland Arts Festival, playing at the Civic Theatre from February 27.
“We literally wrote this show as students when we were in our final years of university,” Toby Marlow remembers. “That was what we thought the end of the journey would be. We’ll do this thing at the end of the year, and once we’ve done a month in Edinburgh and a few performances back in Cambridge, we’ll get proper jobs and start our actual lives.”
After its premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (yep, that one) in 2017 before some producers took a gamble on a West End season. From there it toured across the UK to sell-out seasons, which led to a massive online following. It runs to this day on both the West End and Broadway, has two touring companies across the United States, and new productions in South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Japan and Australia.
Before they took the show to America, the writers were worried about it working in a country that might not necessarily know a lot about Henry VIII. However, they also both realised that they didn’t necessarily know a lot about that era when they started writing.
“We sort of half remembered stuff from school, but we weren’t super experts,” says Moss. “So we ended up writing them with a sense of an audience who weren’t either – giving them the information they needed to know, rather than relying on pre-existing knowledge.”
“It turned out to be quite helpful because we get to say, ‘This is what everyone knows, but this is what you should know.’”
She believes it’s the pop concert vibe that gets it over the line. “The pop concert format is such a globally recognisable thing,” she says. “Everybody everywhere understands that a pop concert equals good vibes. It’s been interesting to see it still manage to work in places where people aren’t so familiar with the history.”
They needn’t be worried about that familiarity here. Just look at how many holds any given Philippa Gregory novel has at your local library. The interpretations are, however, a bit more liberal than your average Gregory yarn.
Katherine Howard, for example, is a fairly clear parallel to the narratives of your Britneys, Demis and Arianas; a young woman who is sexualised and treated in a certain way by the patriarchal industry (her song All You Wanna Do could fit anywhere in Spears’ 00-era oeuvre).
Anna of Cleves was different, however (the musical refers to her as Anna, rather than Anne). The narrative that is most commonly associated with the fourth wife is that she wasn’t attractive enough and so was swiftly divorced. In reality, she outlived Henry and all of his wives, living in luxury and comfort.
“We’ve had people who do Cleves as a bit of Lady Gaga, others have done it a bit like Lizzo,” Marlow says. “It’s really the performers themselves who bring themselves and their own references to it. Cleves has definitely had the broadest.”
Each cast for the show is impressively diverse, a philosophy that has made it especially popular with online audiences (who refer to themselves as “the queendom”). “Girl groups traditionally have a lot of diversity within them,” Morris says. “Look at the Spice Girls. They’re all individuals. This show is about these women reclaiming their space, so it’s really important that it’s not one homogenous group.”
The Spice Girls aren’t just a key reference for them, they’re also part of a full circle moment for the show. The costume designer, Gabriella Slade, who won a Tony Award for the show, was contacted by the band to do the costumes for their 2019 show. “Seeing the actual Spice Girls in Six-style costumes was amazing,” recalls Marlow.
“And there was definitely a Six flare to them!”
Six: The Musical will play at Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival from February 27 at the Civic Theatre. Tickets go on sale from September 26, with a waitlist here.
