After starting life at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017, then getting its North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare in 2019 before heading off to Broadway, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s sassy rock musical (directed by Moss and Jamie Armitage) about the most famous sextet of spouses in history is back for a three-month run at CIBC Theatre. (Or, almost half as long as Henry VIII’s shortest marriage. That would be the one to Anne of Cleves, the second “divorced” in the famous “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived” rhyme, which kicks off the show.)
Six is a blast, mostly because the creators know exactly what they’re going for and commit to it with gleeful showmanship and glam-rock swagger. But they also blend in just enough poignancy to remind us that, even though these women lived and died (at least two in a horrible way—see again that rhyme) nearly 500 years ago, they were real people, making the best of what they could in a system where being a queen, let alone minor nobility before marriage, didn’t mean a lot. Particularly when you’re married to a capricious petulant man-child with absolute power over you, which is never any fun.
Six
Through 7/3: Tue, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe, 800-775-2000, broadwayinchicago.com, $35-$130.
This isn’t a well-behaved PBS documentary by any means. The framing device for this 80-minute romp is that the queens are going to tell us their stories in song as a way of battling it out for who had the worst time of it. (Anne of Cleves can barely keep a straight face pretending to be sad about her fate; more on that later.)
But as the Tudor divas tear into their numbers (and occasionally take swipes at each other), they become less Mean Girls, more Spice Girls. That is, they each have their own identifiable markers. (I think Cleves, with her love of hunting and croquet, might be Sporty Spice, and Catherine of Aragon is definitely Posh, what with being the daughter of the king of Spain and all; yes, I realize I’m one Spice short in this analogy.) But we get just enough background to sympathize with each in turn, and we see them realizing by the end of the show that history has had it twisted. They aren’t remembered only because of their association with Henry VIII; he is only remembered because of them.
This Sisterhood of the Traveling Crown provides each of the six women in the show (backed up onstage by four killer musicians, the Ladies in Waiting) with a knockout solo. Perhaps the most wrenching is “Heart of Stone” from Jane Seymour (Jasmine Forsberg), the one who gave Henry his much-wanted male heir but died less than two weeks later. Popular imagination has Jane as the demure tragic woman, the only one Henry truly loved, perhaps because of her untimely (and not at his hands) death. And maybe that’s true; but as she defiantly proclaims, “You can build me up, you can tear me down / You can try but I’m unbreakable / You can do your best, but I’ll stand the test / You’ll find that I’m unshakeable.”
So OK, not Shakespearean sonnets. But direct, soulful, and, as performed by Forsberg (taking over a role played by Chicagoan Abby Mueller at Chicago Shakes and on Broadway), a rejoinder to the idea that her strength lies only in her submissiveness. Jane knows what she’s signed on for, and to quote a line from Anne Boleyn’s song, she’s “sorry, not sorry.” Except for not being able to see her son grow up. (Edward VI died at 15, so maybe that was a blessing.)
Catherine of Aragon (Khaila Wilcoxon), who was married to Henry the longest, delivers “No Way” with all the blistering passion of Effie in Dreamgirls declaring “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” Storm Lever’s Anne Boleyn combines effervescence with ruefulness in “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” while Didi Romero’s Katherine Howard outlines the creepy attentions of much older men that have followed her since she was barely pubescent in “All You Wanna Do.”
I’m an avowed Cleves fan, and just as in the Chicago Shakes production, my favorite number remains “Get Down,” sung with knowing finger-snapping assurance by Olivia Donalson. Rejected by Henry for not matching the pleasing visage in her Hans Holbein portrait (apparently Henry either didn’t have mirrors in his palaces, or was actually a vampire), Cleves accepts the offer to end the marriage and continue living in England in her own palace—unwed, unbought, unbossed. Oh, and spared having to actually, you know, sleep with the bad-tempered guy with smelly ulcers on his legs.
She knows she has the best bargain in the bunch, and can’t resist needling the others. “I died of plague,” she says at one point. “Really?” one of the other queens asks. “Nah, just kidding. My life is amazing,” Donalson’s Cleves giggles.
But it’s Gabriela Carrillo’s Catherine Parr (next to the first Catherine, probably the best educated of the six) who ties it up with “I Don’t Need Your Love.” Ultimately married four times, Parr directs the song to the man she gives up for Henry, Thomas Seymour, who ended up being her last husband. There’s definitely a whiff of Eliza’s “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story” from Hamilton, as Catherine recites all the things she did (writing, promoting women’s education) that had fuck-all to do with being Henry’s last wife. But it’s also an invitation to all the wives to let go of being “fixed as one of six” and to “rise above.”
The combination of vocal chops, glam-Tudor costumes by Gabriella Slade, and sheer exuberance onstage makes Six a near-perfect pop confection, with just enough historical bite to linger after the final curtain.
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