Six: The Musical
Long Running Broadway Production
By: Victor Cordell - Nov 17, 2025
I saw this Broadway production on a trip to New York. Thanks to Six: The Musical’s producers, represented by public relations firm Boneau/Bryan-Brown, for their generous provision of press tickets for members attending the American Theatre Critics Association Conference.
The opening of the fantasy musical Six is like a thunderous rock concert with a darkened stage, thumping music, fog, and six potent women abreast in costumes that bridge the 16th and 21st centuries - rigid, colorful, and sparkly with boots ‘a made for stompin’. They own the stage. The opening number, “Ex-wives,” sets the scene with its noteworthy and rhythmically incessant lyrics “Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived,” which are the successive outcomes of the women in question.
These are the dead wives of Henry VIII, allowing for spelling variations, the three Catherines, two Annes, and a Jane. Something you may not have thought of – you probably know who some or all of these women are, but could you name the queen of Henry VII, or Henry VI, or …..? The six may not have produced a male heir that survived into adulthood, but they did make history.
Six charges forward with high-volume, mostly hard rock music with an all-female cast and all-female band. Not a man to be found on stage. There is a lot of jousting repartee among the wives, with the conceit being that the one who can convince the others that she had it the worst as queen, would get to be the lead singer of the six. A recurring schtick is that each time one of the other wives pouts about how miserable her life had been, Anne Boleyn chimes in, “But did you lose your head?” The trash talk and clatter clashes are punctuated by solo songs by each queen in chronological order that deal with their travails.
The voices are uniformly strong and wailing. The music is listenable and danceable, at least as choreographed for the six. Apart from the noisy but tuneful soliloquies from most wives, an occasional gentle melody sneaks in as with Jane Seymour’s luxuriant and memorable anthem, the beautiful “Heart of Stone.” Although the song is about endurance, Jane died from birthing the future Edward VI, barely a year into marrying Henry and before her 30th birthday. Edward would die at age 16. Another fine song is Catherine Parr’s melodic lament “I Don’t Need Your Love,” which explores leaving love behind when forced into an arranged royal marriage.
Now comes a philosophical point of whether a reviewer should represent only their own point of view or recognize that their personal opinion may be well out of sync with what the market is looking for. Despite Six not speaking to me or my wife (or the little girl behind us), I have to accept its virtues, as the audience was overwhelmingly entertained, and its already four-year Broadway run speaks for itself. The 80 minutes does go by quickly, and it will leave a lot of the audience wanting more. In particular, teen girls and young women hoot and howl, probably because the music and dialog work for them and because it is of, by, and for females. That in no way suggests that boys and men shouldn’t enjoy it, because at the same time, it’s a very muscular show in most every way.
Six: The Musical, with book, lyrics, and music by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, plays at the Lena Horne Theater, New York, New York, on an open run.