Gemma @ 'Six the Musical' - Just What I Needed
What’s it about?
Six is an original pop musical written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. The story follows the six wives of Henry VIII, live, in concert, and ready to reclaim their stories from history. Six is herstory. Think The Tudors meets Spice Girls.
My Experience.
I have always looked at the arts and especially live theatre as an outlet. I can rely on shows to make me feel things that span the spectrum of human emotion. And there is really nothing quite like being transported and surprised and made to think by the massive collaborative effort that results in a theatrical production. So naturally, attending a play or musical or comedy show or WHATEVER is my idea of a good time, pretty much all the time. And I see so many shows, that if I didn’t have my Google calendar to hold me accountable for everything I’ve happily committed to seeing (sometimes months in advance), I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it all.
Enter my good friend from college, Amanda. She is like a walking theatre encyclopedia. When she isn’t performing herself, she is studying up on the must-see shows, how exactly to get the best seats possible at the appropriate venues for the right prices, and making active plans to go out and see the productions on her list. She also has an eerily good track record for predicting what will win Best Musical at the Tony Awards (she called The Band’s Visit and Hadestown and countless others).
And so Six was just another show that Amanda had deemed to be worth experiencing. She was already obsessed with the studio album recording featuring the original UK cast and beyond thrilled that the show was moving from the West End to Broadway. To be honest, I remember agreeing pretty quickly to see the show with her. I was very interested in the British royals. As a child, I had devoured the Showtime TV show, The Tudors, starring a dreamy Jonathan Rhys Meyers as King Henry VIII, and a charming Natalie Dormer as the famously beheaded Anne Boleyn.
Our group was fittingly going to be six ladies in total. In addition to Amanda and I, we would be joined by our other college friend, Kayla, Amanda’s mom and cousin, and one of Amanda’s family friends. Amanda found the cheapest tickets available, and I paid her for my ticket on Venmo. That was MONTHS AGO. I entered the date we were seeing the show in my phone and then didn’t think about it again.
The night before we were all supposed to see the show was…hard for me, to say the least. I unexpectedly ended a longterm relationship and was heartbroken, still in that shaky, is-this-really-happening, recovery stage. It kind of caught me off guard to find that one night later, I was going to be seeing Six. Of all the nights! There was such hype about this show, and I was worried that I would be too in my head about what had happened the previous night to appreciate everything properly.
Our party nearly filled up an entire row of the theatre. There was one young woman to the left of me who I found out had been following Six since its origin. She had seen it in England and now was in New York City to see the show on Broadway.
A young woman and man holding drinks made their way to their seats towards the front of the mezzanine to absolutely thunderous applause and cheers. I had no idea what was happening. I was pretty in tune with pop-culture, but these people looked like college kids who were young enough to get carded at most bars, and not like any celebrities I knew. The lady to the left of me chimed in that these people were Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, A.K.A., the literal WRITERS OF THE SHOW!
Um…what?!
I was told that Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss were 25 and 26, respectively. MY. AGE. And they had written a musical which was only in previews, but already generating Tony buzz. I found the sheer talent at such a young age to be simultaneously impressive and also a bit jealousy-inducing. I couldn’t believe how much they had accomplished in the first quarter of their lives.
When the six queens took the stage, I fell in LOVE with their costumes. They were Tudor-ish but modern, and each look was distinctive.
Catherine of Aragon was dressed all in gold and black and wearing a killer spiky crown. Anne Boleyn was appropriately clad in green as a nod to Greensleeves, the song it is believed Henry VIII wrote about her. Jane Seymour was rocking her white and black ensemble. Anne of Cleves was delightfully punky in red. Catherine Howard was in head-to-toe pink and had total Ariana Grande hair with pink streaks. And Catherine Parr was powerful in her blue top and black pants.
I was so glad I hadn’t listened to the music prior to the show. Every note, every clever joke, every rhyme was a thrilling surprise to me. I was on the edge of my seat, bouncing to the beat the entirety of the musical. It was like being at a pop concert and the energy was tangible.
The show is too good to have it be spoiled in any way. It isn’t worth going into the best lines and songs and the most humorous moments (there are many to choose from) because it is best enjoyed as it was intended to be: live.
Attending Six exactly when I did was just what I needed; The stories ignited in me a sense of hope and healing and happiness even after recently experiencing something undeniably sad. There is a reason I consider the arts to be my preferred brand of therapy.
Six is a musical that is revolutionary in all ways - There has never been anything like it, and there will never be again. And it’s hard to imagine a time where I won’t be listening to the soundtrack on loop or have the music stuck in my head.
