If ‘Six’ is on at a theatre near you, go and see it. You can find the dates HERE.

‘Six’ was the most fun I’ve had in a theatre for decades. We saw it at the Theatre Royal, Bath. It was the first time I’d had to queue to get in. The house was packed and by the end of the performance, everyone was on their feet. The energy coming from the audience was only exceeded by the power being pumped out by the six women on the stage.

‘Six’ is a musical about the six wives of Henry VIII. That may not sound very exciting, or very original but it was both. It was also funny, energetic and was delivered almost entirely through original songs that pulsed through the theatre.

‘Six’ opens with all six women on stage, backlit, raising their fists in the air one at a time as they each chant their status:

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. 

They look like rock stars, not victims. They have voices and they’re going to use them. After they chant their status they sing:

All this time 
They’ve been just one word in a stupid rhyme
So they picked up a pen and a microphone
History’s about to get overthrown. 

At the start, it seems as if each of Henry’s wives is going to tell her story so that we can vote on who is the best ex-wife but it cleverly transforms into something much more subversive than that. It puts the women and not Henry centre stage. It’s witty without being too clever-clever. Although all of the women are on stage all of the time, they each get a turn in the spotlight (literally). They each have a clear character and the chemistry between them is palpable. Together they do indeed ‘overthrow history’ and give us all a great time as they do it.

The show runs for eighty minutes with no interval and the whole time the six women in the cast are on stage singing, dancing, and delivering killer one-liners as a live band plays behind them. The lights, the costumes, the choreography, all of it worked so well that I didn’t look away for a moment.

Here’s a video to give you an idea of what the performance is like.

What the video doesn’t capture is what it’s like to see this live with hundreds of other people. The performances, the lights and the music grabbed the audience and carried them along. The excitement generated felt like a wave that I was riding. That power, that joy, that sense of connection is what good theatre is all about.