I’m super excited about the theatre scene in London, and I am really looking forward to seeing many of the shows on the West End and in the city. In fact, I’ve already seen the musical Six at the Vaudville Theatre. Our abroad company, Arcadia abroad, sourced these tickets for us as a part of our orientation. I’m really grateful for this, and I know that a lot of people who wouldn’t normally go see a musical ended up attending and really enjoying themselves. In this aspect, it was fantastic to see people who don't typically attend musicals enjoying themselves and supporting the arts. While my experience watching the energetic and entertaining musical was positive, my thoughts on the show as a whole are more critical.

Firstly, the show was packed with talent. The six actors did an awesome job performing, especially since it can be tiring to stay on stage singing and dancing (in heels!!!) for so long. The band also was fantastic. Again, I know how tiring it can be when performing without a break, but this was not conveyed through their performances and everyone involved added energy, life, and great talent to the production. The actors transitioned seamlessly from song to song and I found myself to empathize with each one as she told her story.

Another positive aspect of Six was the set, lighting, and costume design. This was one of the most colorful shows that I’ve seen and greatly enhanced the production in my opinion. Six seemed a lot like a concert, and the changing lights and bold costumes added to this feeling and to the fun of it all. It seemed as if the audience members had a blast, which was made evidence by the cheering mid-song. The set, which was set up like a stage at a modern concert would be, also added to this feeling. It was a fairly simple floor, which allowed the actors' costumes to stand out. The most flashy aspect of the set was the back wall, which was programmed to change between different lights and patterns much like a concert would. It was an awesome show to watch, and my lighting designer friend was very impressed by the technical aspect of the show (as was I!).

Although I enjoyed this production visually and thought the actors and band members were all very talented, I was not wholly pleased with the show itself. To start, the whole musical modernizes historical figures and creates characters out of them. The precedent for this is sharing the stories of the six women who were all oppressed by their husband King Henry VIII, as is expressed toward the beginning. While I really like this idea, I think that Six fails to actually tell their stories and merely focuses on their marriages and King Henry’s faults. Each song tells the story of the women’s marriages, sharing how King Henry wronged them. Instead of unifying the women as strong and unique people, focusing on their unfortunate marriages united them in a negative way. In my opinion, Six fails to be a truly feminist musical because it focuses more on their marriages rather than on the protagonists themselves. By the end of the play, the only way I could define the women was by their marriages, which should be largely irrelevant if we’re trying to see them as independent women. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you one actual fact about each of them. After some research, I discovered that many of these women were incredibly interesting and that some of them were related (by blood and in other ways aside from their marriages). That being said, I find that Six is far too short of a musical to not mention any of this. Coming in at about an hour and twenty minutes, there was more than enough time to dig into who these women truly were rather than just share how their husband and society failed them. One thing that would have been interesting would be to add more songs after that final realization that they should all work together which would dive into who they really were as individuals.

 Toward the end, this was a great thing that they had going. The women bring up the fact that Henry VIII is only remembered because of them and not for anything pertaining to his kingship and reign. Great! Now, I want to hear more than this. Rather than delve into their real lives and accomplishments, the musical progresses into what I believe was the most problematic aspect of the concept. The six women proceed to “rewrite history,” changing their stories and giving themselves happy endings. While this is nice and can give some audience members a feeling of satisfaction, the real truth of it is that these stories are not true. The tragedies that these women experienced were real, and rewriting their stories glazes over the fact that they did suffer. Joking about it is one thing (I did start to tire of the countless beheading jokes), but going on to literally change their endings created an even more characterized version of real people and detracts from the true importance of their lives and deaths. Ann Boleyn could never have written with Shakespeare because she was executed around a decade before he was born. Jane Seymour did not watch her family grow or have more children because she tragically passed away. While these are the endings we would have loved to have seen for these women in real life, especially after watching them perform for us and share their stories, we can’t forget about what actually happened to them. Rewriting their stories at the end was like putting a bow on top of a broken bike and calling it a day. I was looking forward to truly learning about these women as people, but all I left with was a feeling of disappointment at this wasted potential. By neglecting the truth of their stories to prioritize a fake happy ending, Six does nothing for these women and, in my opinion, simply capitalizes off their tragedies. The musical claims to shed light on their lives, but in reality just adds color, glitter, and sass to tragic stories and calls it a day. If Six truly wanted to be a feminist play, it would have delved deeper into who these women really were rather than simply stating the fact that they were important.

This review is the most critical one I’ve written yet because, out of all the productions I’ve recently seen, it is one that I just didn’t resonate with. By writing this, I don’t mean to detract from the cast and crew in any way because everyone involved in the production I saw did a fantastic job. I simply believe that it is important to remember that these women were more than just their oppression and had lives and individual humanity. I like the concept for Six, but in my opinion the execution (pun intended) of the musical itself did not meet my expectations.