Emily Warner discusses the success of Six the Musical, as both a high-energy performance and feminist statement.
Image Credit: Photos by Pamela Raith.
‘Remember us?’
The question comes from Henry VIII’s six wives, with a twist. Although you may know them from your GCSEs, they’re back with a modern makeover, dominating the stage in a flurry of lights, glamour and pop. Beneath the major historical facelift that has been performed to convert these six wives into an explosive, all-female pop-band, the actual lives of the women are barely distinguishable. The musical however, does ask an important question: were they ever distinguishable without their husband, ‘‘Tall, large, Henry the VIII / Supreme head of the Church of England”?
The musical originated in the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society and was written for the Edinburgh Fringe. There were six central aims of the show (a fitting number, right?). The final two of these were executed perfectly; to use the pop genre to tell a fun, comic and powerful story, exclusively by women, and to acknowledge the silliness of musicals as a genre without being too earnest. However, the other four aims all harken back to the same thing; feminism, and whether this laudable aim is achieved is an area of contention. Six is undeniably fun. I took my seat in anticipation and as the lights darkened, the room filled with the excited whispers of people from a whole spectrum of life; children, suit-clad men, giddy teenagers, parents, grandparents. Seconds later, I was slapped across the face with an immersive, captivating cascade of sound, lights, and movement, and. In the centre of it all, six shadowy figures, silhouetted by coloured lights. ‘We, are, live!’
The following 80-minutes seemed to be spent flattened to the back of my seat as my mind scurried to catch up with my eyes. Before seeing the performance, I had already known every song and I was not alone in this, as. One thousand people in the audience simultaneously began to chime in with foot tapping here and head nodding there. TikTok clearly did its job well. Staged as a decidedly hostile singing competition to choose the ‘leading lady’, each queen performed a solo in which they were masterfully characterised by their different song styles and costume colours.
Image Credit: Photos by Pamela Raith.
Catherine of Aragon (Chlöe Hart) began with ‘No Way’, which may as well be named ‘Put a Ring on It’ for its Beyonce-inspired tone. Katherine Howard (Rebecca Wickes) gave a dazzling reinvention of Britney Spears. Portrayed as sexy and vain, she sings her way through ‘four choruses’ of sexual abuse, catapulting her song straight into the #MeToo era.This reminds us of the parallels to be found in the female experience, even 500 years later. ‘The House of Holbein’ was a standout performance. Renaissance portrait painting was reimagined as speed dating, the result being a strange fusion of tudor beauty rituals and Take Me Out. The cast all wore glow-in-the-dark glasses and ruff collars for this delightful anachronistic mash-up of German oom-pah music, house music and tutor dress. The musical mixing bowl continued with Jane Seymour’s (Casey Al-Shaqsey) Adele-esque power ballad, Anna of Cleves (Jessica Niles) indulgently materialistic ‘Get Down’ and Anne Bolyn’s (Jennifer Caldwell) ditzy delivery of, ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’ with a pun so blatant it’s enjoyable.
It is not until the final song that the petty catfighting between queens is declared a ‘waste of time’ and the musical takes a dramatic U-turn. The intention here is to expose the patriarchal-ridden lens through which we normally view Henry VIII’s wives. They are only accessories to his renown. However, as a feminist statement, the musical seems strangely vacuous and its sentiments get lost somewhere between the glitter and the disco balls. The musical has been criticised as obvious, predictable and basic in its message. Beneath the shimmery surface of female empowerment and reclamation which characterises the final song, there is, some would argue, very little else. This claim is unjustifiably harsh but it’s true that Six presents the easiest kind of feminism to swallow. Even the verb ‘swallow’ implies more effort than it requires. One simply has to sit back and accept the slightly incredulous sisterhood as a rewriting of history. Show over, female agency reclaimed, job done. However, if the astute viewer were to probe into this a little further they may ask; , ‘Have they really managed to rewrite their stories?’ The lyrics of the last song read, ‘Too many years lost in his story / We’re free to take our crowning glory / For five more minutes’. Listening to this line, I found myself wondering if five minutes was enough for them to extricate themselves from ‘his story’. If this was the central aim of the musical, then why was the majority of it spent staging a competition between the queens? Why create a competition which solidified their status as Henry VIII’s wives, one which asked the audience to form judgements based on who was the biggest victim?
Regardless of these slightly uneasy questions, most people don’t go to a musical expecting a pervasive critique of the way history is documented, or an exposition of the patriarchally coded language used to discuss the past. What was clear from watching the show is that the audience loved it and I found myself laughing along at every turn of phrase or historical pun. So, maybe you can’t refer to Six as inspiration for your next feminism essay, but that doesn’t prevent it being enjoyed as a catchy, high-energy, rambunctious performance.
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