I Have Too Many Thoughts and Feelings About Six: The Musical

As a critic, I generally try to write my reviews so they make for satisfying reading regardless of whether the reader can see the show or not. I’m also very aware that in the case of many local shows, a thoughtful review is worth putting time and effort into, especially in the desert that is critical culture in Aotearoa.

However, sometimes, the thoughts and the feelings come and neither the show nor its audience need them. There are more people currently listening to songs from Six: The Musical than will ever read these words. Hell, there are probably more people performing in the various productions of Six: The Musical around the world than will ever read these words. To say nothing of anybody who actually cares about Six: The Musical. If you care about the show, you love it, you’ve heard the recordings, you don’t want to hear anybody criticise it. Believe me, I get it, I watch Family Guy.

All of that said, here are some thoughts and feelings about Six: The Musical.

It’s a lot of fun

Look, it is. It’s essentially a girl group concert with scripted bits in between. How often do you get to see a fully choreographed girl group in this day and age? Not often! Even someone as churlish as me can’t help but be affected by six women in gorgeous costumes belting their lives out while dozens of lights scatter across the theatre.

The cast are working tremendously hard

Even though the musical is shorter than your average Broadway show – 80 minutes compared to two hours-plus – everybody is on point all the time. The cast I saw on the Sunday matinee (Kimberly Hodgson, Deidre Khoo, Loren Hunter, swing Thalia Smith doing a particularly stellar job, Chelsea Dawson and Giorgia Kennedy) performed as though they were playing to a fully buzzed opening night. All six actors are onstage all the time, doing energetic choreography, all while waiting their turn to hit high notes. While the show asks for a fair bit of pantomimery from cast, they meet those demands without ever tipping into being too cringe.

It’s comfort food

There’s nothing wrong with comfort food, but I think of the food pyramid (which has to be outdated by now, right?). It’s OK to have sometimes, but maybe not all time.

It’s the nature of comfort that gives me a bit of (dramatic) pause, in regards, to Six. It’s a show that absolutely knows its audience: people who probably already know a fair bit about Tudor history. They know the names of the wives, the order they were married in, and even the reason why they were no longer Henry VIII’s wives. This is a country that Philippa Gregory is probably extremely thankful for, financially speaking. Bleaker: we live in a country where a lot of us were taught Tudor history rather than our own history. 

It’s comforting to have what we know sold back to us by a piece of art. It tells us the thing we know was worth knowing.

This extends to Six’s comedy. This may sound harsh, but I’ll go here, even if briefly: every single joke and play on word in Six: The Musical is a joke that you’ve heard before. Lines that made me made my eyes (“My sleeves may be green but my lipstick’s red”, “Let’s get in reformation”, endless  It’s funny, sure, but not a single punchline or rhyme is a risk. It’s safe. It also works. They’re making these jokes because people have laughed at them. (And look at how many productions are currently touring the world. That’s a lot of laughs!)

It also extends, once more, to Six’s songs, although this feels more strategic. They’re just close enough to hit songs to scratch that particular musical itch in your brain (although not close enough to be, you know, illegal). “Get Down”, Anne of Cleves’ triumphant ode to divorce, references the keyboard riff of Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s “Fancy”. “Six”, the fanfiction-y closing song, looks towards the ukulele on GRL’s lesser known “Ugly Heart”. The queens themselves are references to comfortable popstars too – Anne Boleyn to Lily Allen, Jane Seymour to Adele. 

We’re not getting anything new here. Doesn’t mean it’s not fun (see above), though. However, the less said about the show’s meta-framing - where the queens start to question the competition to be the “worst off” queen - the better. The jokes and songs may not be new, but they’re at least they’re not tired.

It feels very much of a time.

Although Six: The Musical makes its way here in 2025 (after being postponed from 2022), its origins lie eight years ago in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. You might sense that it is not quite of the moment by the list of popstars referenced above – remember the Charli XCX of Brat is not the Charli XCX who slumbered as hook singer – and also how long it takes for musicals to reach Aotearoa. Eight years after premiere seems just about right.

Which leads to another level of comfort entirely: People want to see the show they’re familiar with. They want to hear the songs as they’re sung on the recordings. They want to see them as they’ve been performed on award shows. Eight years is enough time for a musical to develop superfans, to find what their favourite riff of their favourite song is on Youtube (guilty as charged, but not for this show). It’s to Six’s credit that a core part of its philosophy is allowing the performers to bring a little bit of themselves – to speak in their own accents, find their way through the titanic melodies that seem designed to destroy vocal chords – but this is fundamentally the same Six that you would see on Broadway, the West End, China, or somewhere else in the world.

It looks, sounds, and feels very 2017. Even the politics - pop feminism, intentional but shallow representation for actors of colours - are very 2017. But that’s where I’ll also say…

It’s not that deep

Look, I’ve listened to “Heart of Stone” (Jane Seymour’s schmaltzy ballad) about 50 times since I saw the show. “All I Wanna Do” (Katherine Howard’s take on Katy Perry) and “I Don’t Need Your Love” (Catherine Parr’s show-stopping closer) have been on my regular rotation since the OG recording was released. For someone who has a lot of not especially positive thoughts and feelings about Six: The Musical, I’ve listened to a disproportionate amount of Six: The Musical.

If you’re in the bag for Six: The Musical, you’ve already booked a ticket. If you aren’t, you probably don’t even know what the hell it is, and learning about it will only confuse and upset you. If you’re in between, great. Let’s be friends. We’re probably similar.

Six: The Musical runs at the Civic Theatre as part of Auckland Arts Festival until March 23.