The explosively joyous UK musical reclaims history for the beleaguered Queens: divorced, beheaded, live!*
Once in a generation, a musical becomes a cultural phenomenon. When Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton landed in New York, it joined the story-focused Oklahoma, the rock opera Hair, the highbrow, complicated Company and, yes, even the box office-smashing spectacle of Cats in breaking the form open and changing its course.
Hamilton, with its revisionist history, contemporary storytelling and referential hip-hop score quickly became a milestone genre work – and just a few years later, musical theatre creators are already taking a leaf out of its book.
Six, the West End hit whose Australian production opened in Sydney last night – a month ahead of the show’s upcoming Broadway debut – is one of the first true post-Hamilton musicals. Only this time the reclamation of history is for the women we’ve dismissed, or judged as villains.
The musical comes in a decade which has seen Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt and Marcia Clark each seize and reframe their own stories, but in Six we go back 500 years further, as the wives of Henry VIII take the floor. Their marriages were bloody, messy, church-reforming, and pored over by gossipy historians – but this time they’re telling their stories, their way: with a live performance contest starring the hottest pop ghost-girl group you’ve ever seen.
They are Fifth Harmony, sure – singing together with tight sounds and tighter choreography – but all six are also that group’s breakout star Normani: when each get their moment to take the spotlight and go solo, the audience just about loses their minds. And like Hamilton’s deep cut homages to R&B artists (and Normani’s, for that matter), they do it by remixing, referencing and shouting out the women of pop. Come for the Spice Girls easter eggs, stay for the Geensleeves ones.
Written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss – who have also written for Australia’s pre-eminent singing drag queen Courtney Act – Six takes the proto-feminism of Hamilton’s women along with the populist feminism of the 2010s, and folds them into a bright, short and snappy musical revue that sees the Queens go from competing with to supporting one another. This happens via often funny and occasionally moving musical numbers that are drenched with a love for pure pop, royal history, and giving women their due.
The show is a viral hit with musical theatre’s young fanbase – it’s the second-most streamed cast album in the world – and in Sydney, at the Opera House no less, that bright musical theatre-pop still manages to sound cool. We can thank the band for that – led by musical director Claire Healy on keys, with Ali Foster on drums, Debbie Yap on guitar, and Jessica Dunn on bass – who find the dirty, hot fun in the score and elevate it. Tim Deiling’s lighting is explosively colourful, and Gabriella Slade’s costumes, which remix Tudor finery into sequinned performance gear, are a delight.
But you come for the Queens, and these queens do not disappoint. Like the musical version of Alexander Hamilton himself, who is Eminem-meets-Sweeney Todd, each of the ex-wives embody a couple of modern “Queenspirations”: Catherine of Aragon (with nods at Beyonce and Shakira) is played by Chloé Zuel, who moves and sounds like a pop princess; Kala Gare is Anne Boleyn (Lily Allen and Avril Lavigne), with the kind of star power and cheek that should propel her to more major musical stages; Loren Hunter plays Jane Seymour (Adele and Sia), whose lovely ballad lands just right; Anne of Cleves (Nicki Minaj and Rihanna) is played by Kiana Daniele, a new performer with killer stage presence who just about walks off with the show; Courtney Monsma plays Katherine Howard (Ariana Grande and Britney Spears), and gracefully moves from blithe to dark in one short song; and Catherine Parr (Alicia Keys and Emeli Sande) is played by Vidya Makan, who blows the roof off with stunning vocals and – crucially – carries the show into a denouement that could, in less confident hands, feel far too treacly.
Six is constantly at risk of sliding into syrup: its feminist message is the lightest and most easily consumable one possible, some of the lyrics and lines are a little heavy handed, and the whole thing is so music-forward that the brief dialogue scenes threaten its collapse. But under international associate director Grace Taylor and Australian associate director Sharon Millerchip, the performers know when to lean into the charm and when to modulate into something softer.
Musicals aren’t always kind to women (some classics are downright misogynist), but Six is a joyous celebration of sisterhood. It’s the kind of show that makes you want to be a teenager again; if you’d found Six when you were sixteen, you’d be obsessed too. No wonder it’s getting 60,000 streams per day.
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* Article originally published via LTD
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