Review: SIX at ASU Gammage

Guest contributor David Appleford’s review of SIX THE MUSICAL at ASU Gammage.

What’s more satisfying than watching six wronged women reclaim their power? Watching them do it in rhinestone corsets, backed by a thunderous girl band and enough LED lighting to short-circuit Times Square. SIX, the British import that’s barreled from university revue to Broadway headliner like a sugar-rushed Spice Girls revival, is a history class... if the lessons were taught in stilettos and unapologetic girl-group glory.

Now playing at ASU Gammage in Tempe until March 22, the six ex-wives of Henry VIII have had enough of being historical speed bumps or footnotes, trailing after the man who chopped his way through matrimony like an executioner. So now, they’re taking to the stage, not with dusty monologues or tragic sighs, but with mic drops and the collective force of a thousand years of pent-up feminist fury.

And it almost didn’t happen. The show was primed to open on Broadway in 2020 when Covid did what Henry couldn’t. It shut them all down. Hours before opening night, the curtain was yanked. But these queens didn’t go quietly. They’ve waited centuries to rewrite their legacy. They did it in Tempe in 2022, and now they’re back to make sure we hear them, loud, proud, and gloriously amplified.

The premise is simple but sly. Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage, it’s as if you’re watching a pop concert with auditions—each wife belts her trauma angling for the lead singer slot. Think The Tudor Von Trapps meet The Eurovision Song Contest. It doesn’t so much unfold as surge forward, sleek and unstoppable, like a bullet train with a sequined crown.

Creators Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss first cooked this up as a cheeky Cambridge student project, and it shows in both the best and worst ways. The script is packed with zingy jokes, pop-culture nods, and enough anachronistic lingo to fill a semester of freshman dorm posters. But if this is feminism, it’s the sparkly kind, and each queen gets her spotlight moment.

Emma Elizabeth Smith as Catherine of Aragon, opens the show with No Way, a power-pop anthem of righteous defiance.  Nella Cole’s Anne Boleyn is a bubblegum anarchist, giggling through decapitation jokes with such bratty glee you almost forget how it ends for her. Carlina Parker’s Anna of Cleves struts into Get Down like she owns the palace, and after her divorce settlement, maybe she does. It’s the closest a Henry wife has come to a happily-ever-after, and Parker sells it like royalty moonlighting as a Vogue cover girl.

Then there’s Katherine Howard, played by Alizé Cruz like Ariana Grande’s ghost of girlhood past, with a pink ponytail, platform boots, and a disturbingly chipper attitude about surviving child abuse. Her solo, All You Wanna Do, is a queasy masterstroke: a catchy pop that slowly unravels into a horror story of grooming and gaslighting.

Abigail Sparrow’s Catherine Parr delivers the show’s most quietly subversive message; maybe women don’t need to fight for the crown at all. Cue the girl-power group hug. And finally, Kelly Denice Taylor’s Jane Seymour dials down the sass for Heart of Stone, a poignant, no-frills ballad that actually pauses the show’s whiplash pacing for something like heart.

It’s all staged like a feminist halftime show in a Tudor sporting event. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s choreography pulses with timed-to-the-second bravado precision, and Gabriella Slade’s costumes are a glittering riot of ruffs and rhinestones. Emma Bailey’s set, a stylized neon court, is lit like the gods are watching, and if they aren’t, Tim Deiling’s lighting will blind them into submission.

And yet, for all its sparkle, SIX is deliberately spare. The staging is concert-minimal with no sweeping set changes, no costume parade beyond the already bedazzled armor, and no elaborate scenic storytelling to cushion the experience. The narrative is more concept than chronicle; character development comes in swift, glittering strokes rather than deep excavation. For some theater-goers, especially those who crave the sweep of a traditional book musical, the show’s streamlined structure may feel slight. Even the arena-sized decibel level can occasionally blur the razor-sharp wit of the lyrics, which fly by at a pace that rewards only the most attentive of ears.

However, what makes SIX such a giddy lightning bolt of a show is its refusal to overstay its welcome. It arrives, detonates, and is gone in eighty breathless minutes. There’s no intermission, no narrative detours, and no polite pauses to let the air out of the balloon. The pacing is relentless in the best way, as if the six queens have collectively decided that history has dawdled over them long enough. The closing Megasix turns the theater into something closer to an arena tour encore. It’s a savvy gesture: the evening ends not with a curtain call but with a coronation of the audience itself, invited to clap, join the pop monarchy, and cheer rapturously, which the opening night Gammage audience did, not only at the conclusion but throughout the show.

Yes, it’s shallow. Yes, it’s flashy. And yes, it’s thoroughly enjoyable, as long as your threshold for depth isn’t too demanding. SIX doesn’t pretend to be high art. You wouldn’t be out of place if you thought that the format feels closer to a glam-rock cabaret than a traditional musical. Or that the historical revisionism is less academic and more pop fantasy. But, seriously, why bother? It’s more concerned with revenge than reverence as it trades biography for rock ‘n pop. What it offers instead is a compact burst of personality where six women reclaim their stories with microphones in hand and a backbeat performed to rock perfection on stage by a four-woman band led by music director Valerie Maze, credited in the program as The Ladies In Waiting. And it absolutely works.

In other words, the women of SIX aren’t trying to reclaim history so much as kick it in the teeth and dance on the crown.  And in a world still ruled in parts by bad men, that feels like a revolution worth singing about.

ASU Gammage -- https://www.asugammage.com/ -- 1200 S. Forest Avenue, Tempe, AZ 480-965-3434

Photo credit to Joan Marcus