Six by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sixby Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss Horacio Sierra SIX. By Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage. Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York City. October 9, 2021. In a theatrical landscape regularly awash with jukebox musicals that cull the catalogs of big-name pop artists such as ABBA, Alanis Morrissette, Gloria Estefan, the Go-Gos, and more, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's Sixarrived on Broadway with an original score of radio-friendly hooks, TikTok-ready dance moves, and a racially diverse cast of tabloid-worthy divas that gave legitimate pop stars a run for their money. The musical's selling point is that its supersonic score takes inspiration from King Henry VIII's six wives as much as it does the pop sirens of the last twenty years. This dynamic combination gave the audience the chance to veer from silently thanking their high school history teachers for giving them the ability to laugh at puns about the Protestant Reformation to priding themselves for recognizing choreography indebted to Beyoncé's "Formation." By amalgamating the academic humor of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)with the rhetoric of superficial third-wave feminist pop stars, Sixcreated a frothy but provocative musical that offered bespoke narratives for sixteenth-century women whose travails are all the more relevant in the #MeToo era. Whether on London's West End or the various cruise ships where Sixwas staged before it debuted on Broadway, its creators proved that they found a formula that caters to an audience of pop music–loving millennials and Generation Zers who, in a post-Madonna cultural landscape, are liable to see Catherine of Aragon, Gloria Steinem, and Selena Gomez as equals in the feminist canon. Like a Black Pink music video, Six's plot was threadbare but straightforward enough: the women form a girl group and each one is competing to become the sextet's lead singer. The sole criterion for becoming the leader is winning the audience's applause by proving they suffered the most during their marriage to King Henry VIII. The competition format is more akin to the messy politics of twenty-first-century reality TV shows that pit women against one another rather than the sororal communities portrayed in actual early modern literary works such as Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies(1405), María de Zayas's Desenagños amorosos(1647), and Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure(1688). The show's earnest though superficial take on feminist discourse attempts to mirror Zayas's work wherein a safe space is created for women to be candid about the ways in which men belittle, deceive, and murder them without repercussions in a patriarchal society. Six's opening number, "Ex-Wives," encapsulates how the show borrows from the historical lore of England, Broadway, and pop music. Each character is given a verse to flesh out the details of the dreary-but-catchy refrain of "divorced, beheaded, died / divorced, beheaded, survived" à la the imprisoned women of Chicagoin "Cell Block Tango." But unlike the "merry murderesses of the Cook County Jail," these women were unable to exact revenge on their husband. Catherine of Aragon's (Adrianna Hicks) stature as a regal Queen Bee was solidified with its keen homage to Beyoncé at her peak with the fist-pumping "No Way." But more could have been made of how Earth-shattering her divorce was. As the daughter of Europe's most powerful royals, Spain's Catholic monarchs Fernando and Isabel, Catherine was a queen among queens. Her fierce devotion to the Roman Catholic Church and twenty-four-year marriage to the king proved her as a loyal steward of traditional monarchies. Henry's divorce from Catherine ensured that England, Europe, and the world would never be the same as the Reformation ushered in religious wars, geopolitical standoffs, and a refreshing stream of liberal intellectual discourse. Anne Boleyn, played by the addictively charming Andrea Macasaet, garnered hearty laughter every [End Page 77]time she reminded the other wives and audience about the horrors of being beheaded. Lily Allenesque lines such as "The rules were so outdated / Us two wanted...