The sold-out musical ‘Six’ slays at the Marcus Center
Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded …
Thrived!
The musical “Six” reimagines the wives of Henry VIII not as his victims, but as the stars of their own pop-music extravaganza. The Boleyn cast of the hottest new musical since “Hamilton” thrilled a capacity crowd at the Marcus Performing Arts Center Tuesday. The entire Milwaukee run through Sunday is sold out.
Written and composed by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, “Six” turns Henry’s wives into singing queens putting on a concert together. They inform the audience: The woman most wronged will get to be the queen bee of this hive. So one at a time, they make their case in music.
“Six” is also its creators’ enthusiastic love letter to pop, R&B and dance-music divas of the past few decades. You’ll hear an occasional Easter egg, such as Zan Berube’s Anne Boleyn (beheaded) tossing out the opening of the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe.” More often, the tribute is subtler but unmistakable, like the Beyoncé strut of Gerianne Pérez’s formidable Catherine of Aragon (divorced) in “No Way,” or the dramatic melismata a la Alicia Keys from Sydney Parra’s Catherine Parr (survived).
While the queens bicker and banter between numbers, they serve as each other’s squads during their solos. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s crisp choreography frequently brings them close together, foreshadowing the conclusion of the show.
Far be it from a lowly commoner like yours truly to anoint a favorite queen, but it’s impossible not to notice Berube’s Boleyn in her green dress as she bounces mischievously around the stage. (I think the script may underestimate Boleyn as a character, but one can only pack so much historical nuance into an 80-minute musical.) Terica Marie’s Anna of Cleeves (divorced) owns the stage in “Get Down,” where she not only gets down low several times but also gets back up gracefully.
“Six” is not afraid to get silly, especially in the goofy “Haus of Holbein.” Even more than “Hamilton,” “Six” infuses contemporary tropes into these fictionalized historical characters. So Henry swipes right to land Anna of Cleeves, only to be turned off later when she doesn’t seem to resemble her profile picture. More soberly, Aline Mayagoitia’s Katherine Howard (beheaded) is presented as a teenage victim of #MeToo long before Henry got to her.
The Ladies in Waiting, the musical’s nimble onstage band (props to drummer Caroline Moore), shifts gracefully through the show’s many musical styles, from club dance music to the power ballad sung by Amina Faye’s Jane Seymour (died).
The finale of “Six,” in which the queens come together in solidarity, has been one of my favorite moments in musical theater since I first heard the original cast album. Seeing Pérez, Berube, Faye, Marie, Mayagoitia and Parra perform it live only reinforces that feeling.