Six the Musical
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived… and now, live in concert! Holy numerical, the Six pack is back in action. (But the question remains, was it ever out of action?) This pop-powered global phenomenon has already had multiple record-breaking seasons across the country, and now due to popular demand, the disgraced wives of King Henry VIII are back at the Theatre Royal in ye olde Sydneytown following an enthusiastic welcome in Melbourne.
“What if the Spice Girls did a concept album about King Henry VIII’s wives, and Baz Luhrmann directed the concert video?” – Six the Musical has perhaps never been better summarised than in these words, directly quoted from critic Travis Johnson’s review of the production that hit The Studio at the Sydney Opera House between lockdowns in 2020. For the uninitiated, this unconventional pop-rock musical takes a dry historical topic, and turns it into a rowdy 80-minute concert primed to rival the world’s biggest pop groups.
Everyone knows that King Henry VIII had not four, not five, but six wives – enough to require a mnemonic technique to keep track. History (aka “his story”) has reduced the legacies of these ladies to little more than singular words in a rhyme that details their fearsome fates, but what if we carved out space to remember them as real, three-dimensional women?
Six the Musical takes on this noble task by embracing a far-fetched premise: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine H