Review: Six UK Tour at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham

Six takes the crown (pun entirely intended) for the musical that I’ve been trying to see for the longest. We originally had tickets for 24th March 2020, AKA the day after the UK went into the first of several Covid lockdowns. The show was postponed several more times until we’d more or less given up on seeing it. But a few days ago, two and a half years late, we finally made it to the Six UK tour at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal.

What’s it about?

Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. We all know the rhyme about what became of Henry VIII’s six wives. But what about the women themselves, who were all so much more than just their marriages to an infamous tyrant?

Six, written by Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow when they were still students at Cambridge and in their early 20s, reimagines the six Tudor queens as a pop girl group. The women can’t agree on who will be the band’s lead singer, so they decide to hold a competition: they will each tell their story in a song, and whoever is judged to have got the roughest deal in their relationship with Henry will be judged the winner.

They each tell their stories: Catherine of Aragon was married to the King for twenty-four years, only to be tossed aside. Henry changed history when he broke England from the Catholic church to marry Anne Boleyn, only to have her beheaded on trumped-up adultery charges. Jane Seymour truly loved Henry and gave him his longed-for son, but died days after giving birth. Anna of Cleves’ marriage was annulled on account of her supposed lack of beauty. Katherine Howard was a teenage survivor of serial sexual abuse who would later be executed for these premarital “affairs”. And Catherine Parr was forced to leave the man she loved to accept Henry’s proposal.

So who will win the right to lead the band?

Any content notes?

Six is an entertaining show and often very funny. However, it also deals with various difficult subjects including executions, death caused by childbirth, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, forced marriage, and infidelity.

The Katherine Howard scene deals explicitly with the fact that Katherine was sexualised and subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation from multiple adult men, beginning when she was a child of only around thirteen. Survivors of sexual violence may find this scene triggering. This subject is given the respect it deserves but it’s still painful to watch.

There’s a lot of sexual innuendo played for laughs throughout the show.

Six makes use of flashing and strobe-style lighting at several points.

The official age guidance for Six is that it’s suitable for ages 10 and up. Some of the content and jokes are likely to go over younger children’s heads.

Six: My Review

Something I’ve noticed about my all-time favourite musicals is that many of them broadly fall under the category of “it shouldn’t work… but it does.”

One of the less well-known Founding Fathers? That time in the 1830s when a group of students took on the French government, to predictable results? 9/11??? And now, Henry VIII’s wives, but as a pop group? On the face of it, all of these premises for a musical sound bonkers, and yet they are all utterly brilliant.

Six is wacky, over-the-top, extra as hell… and I loved every second of it.

First, let’s talk about its overarching theme and message. Six is, to put it plainly, a feminist masterpiece. It challenges the conventional narratives about these six very different women, who have been effectively erased from history except with regards to their connection to King Henry.

The Queens directly criticise the audience - and by proxy, the historical establishment and society more broadly - for the ways in which we all participate in comparing them and uplifting some at the expense of others. They dare us to think about who they would have been, who they could have been, if they’d been born into a world where they had more agency and freedom. They acknowledge the terribly sad ways these women’s stories really ended, and then they “take back the microphone” and rewrite those stories with a happier ending.

Six also gets right to the heart of some incredibly complex issues, particularly in its portrayal of Jane Seymour. Jane is often regarded as the “lucky one”, because Henry really loved her and she gave him his son. She’s also often presented as meek, mild, and rather boring compared to the other five wives. However, she was also a smart and astute woman who knew how to play the game in order to survive, and she did not escape Henry’s volatile temper (historians claim that Henry once exploded in rage at Jane for “meddling” in political affairs, reminding her what had happened to her predecessor, Anne Boleyn.)

In Jane’s Six song, “Heart of Stone”, we get a nuanced exploration of the mindset of a woman married to an all-powerful tyrant, whom she both genuinely loves and knows could destroy her with a word. Casey Al-Shaqsy, playing Jane, has an absolutely gorgeous singing voice and this song allows her to show it off to its fullest extent.

Jaina Brock-Patel, in her professional debut as Katherine Howard, absolutely had me in bits with her performance. Though (as the show teaches us!) we should be careful not to compare the Queens’ stories in an attempt to figure out “who had it worse”, I’ve always found Howard’s story uniquely harrowing. In her song “All You Wanna Do”, we watch as a young girl realises all the ways in which she has been used and abused by powerful men who see her as nothing but an attractive, sexual body.

Brock-Patel portrays a wonderful sassy-yet-vulnerable Katherine, and her delivery of the lines “I thought this time was different / why did I think he’d be different? / But it’s never, ever different” made me sob.

Jaina Brock-Patel as Katherine Howard. Photo: Six the Musical Fandom

Please don’t take it from this review that this is a doom-and-gloom show, though! Alongside its deft handling of these painful subjects, Six is also really, really funny. The Queens’ banter and bickering results in some hilarious one-liners and pitch-perfect recurring jokes. I particularly enjoyed Anne Boleyn’s (Jennifer Caldwell) repeated quips about losing her head, and Anne of Cleves (Jessica Niles) unsuccessfully trying to convince the others that ending up with an annulled marriage, her own palace, and substantial wealth was a bad fate. The “Haus of Holbein” scene is also ridiculous in the best way.

Previous touring cast in “Haus of Holbein.” Official production photo.

Six is also highly energetic, exuberent, and endlessly visually entertaining. With glitzy costumes, nearly non-stop dancing, and plenty of fun lighting effects, it’s a feast for the senses.

All six of the Queens, from Chloe Hart’s righteously indignant Catherine of Aragon through to Alana M Robinson’s dignified Catherine Parr, were wonderful. The music is fantastic and highly varied (and played by an all-female band!), the visuals are spectacular, and an important message about sisterhood and self-determination is wrapped up in this wonderfully entertaining 75 minute package.

Where to get tickets

Six is on tour throughout the UK until September 2023. See all the dates and locations and get tickets here. Six is also showing at the Vaudeville Theatre on the West End, currently booking until April 2023. Get tickets here.