Six: The Musical – REVIEW
Image: SIX Australian 2021- Cast - Kala Gare,Chelsea Dawson,Kiana Daniele, Loren Hunter,Vidya Makan,Phoenix Jackson Mendoza-PIC CREDIT JAMES D. MORGAN-GETTY IMAGES
Six: The Musical opened, aptly, at the Theatre Royal last night to a crowd of cheering loyalists. This is a sassy, saucy, sexy, all-female Dames of Thrones! These queens are super spicy girls and they’ve got a story to tell.
Since making a more plebeian debut at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival, Six has garnered a sackful of awards and played sell-out shows to ecstatic acclaim globally.
It first came to Sydney in 2020 and was already rocking the sails off the Sydney Opera House when the season was indignantly interrupted by a certain ‘plague’.
When Six returned to the House in December 2021, it remained in court for an unprecedented 15 -week run. The public wanted more, and so the merry ex-wives of Tudor have returned to conquer King Street.
Six: The Musical is more rock cabaret than a traditional musical. Its characters are the six wives of Henry VIII, united on stage to compete for the title of most hard-done-by. One by one they tell their tale of woe through song, performing with the melisma and choreography of a reality-show-spawned girl group.
The six regal ladies who make up the cast are extraordinary in their own right, and spectacular as a group. They are: Phoenix Jackson Mendoza as Catherine of Aragon; Kala Gare as Anne Boleyn;
Loren Hunter as Jane Seymour; Kiana Daniele as Anna of Cleves; Chelsea Dawson as Katherine Howard; and Vidya Makan as Catherine Parr.
The creators of Six, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, were both at uni when they met and came up with the concept. Being young and very aware of mainstream culture, the two modeled the six queens on pop idols such as Beyonce, Adele, Avril Lavigne, Lily Allen, Britney Spears, Sia, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and more.
The costumes are all variations on a theme: glitter, glamour, gorgeous.
Between songs, the women hurl barbs at each other with the ferocity of school girls at the back of the bus. The banter is extremely witty, delivered with impeccable timing, and deliciously bitchy.
At the same time, there’s a camaraderie among them, a unified sense of female empowerment, and recognition of self-identity that isn’t predicated on the childish whims of a rotund, lustful, narcissistic king.
The musicians, an all-female group called Ladies In Waiting, is on stage, so that the show feels very much like a rock concert. It’s a very talented ensemble made up of: music Director / Keys, Claire Healey; Assistant Music Director / Keys, Heidi Maguire; Kathryn Stammers on Drums; Debbie Yap on Guitar; and Jessica Dunn and Ann Metry on Bass.
Six is an electric, high energy, inspiring, hilarious, entertaining, jubilant 75 minutes of pure magic.
The sovereign sextet are clearly still very popular with the people and it looks like Catherine, Anne, Jane, Anna, Katherine, and Catherine will reign supreme for some time to come.
