Six women. Bound together by one man. Their lives were just part of someone’s narrative. Their names remembered because of the one man they all shared.
This is story of Six.
Beneath the modern rock chic visage lies a story that is heavy in these women’s hearts. They fought, they bantered and they related. Everyone seemed to be relative solution to the previous one, but none of them remembered their own identities.
Who were they before Henry VIII changed, or in some cases, destroyed their lives?
Before attending the show, I was sceptical, as the story of the women of Henry VIII had been told so many different times, so what more could they do? I certainly felt that the rock chic idol pop tunes were catchy but is that it?
When I was sitting through the show, I admit that I was completely wrong. Yes, the songs were catchy, the tunes were impeccably sung, but the message in the end was powerful – why would a woman, in this case, six women, let a man who didn’t really care about them, have control over their narrative? In the end, it is their stories, and it should be told according to their angles, not some historians recording what the King wanted.
It was an interesting yet entertaining journey of 75 minutes. The six leads were extremely entertaining and energetic, throwing out one hit after another, as if they were the pop idols of our age, while sing about their lives in the distance past. They each lived a live until they met Henry VIII, when what they wanted and how they wanted to live their lives no longer matter.
The eventual realisation they had become nothing but attachments to a brutal monarch was a wake-up call, not only for them, but for all those who thought that life without being attached to someone is a life not worth living, the initial theme of their so-called pageant in the opening song. Do we define ourselves based on our attachments to others, or do we define ourselves as who we are?
It was not a long musical, which I kind of like, especially in the age of everything thinking the longer the better for musical shows. I must admit that if it is just about recounting the lives of six women, you can only have that many songs. But the fact that none of the songs were fillers is what made this story telling musical great. The music was sharp, the playing was sharp, the singing was sharp and the message was sharp. These are the elements that made this musical one of the memorable ones for me.
The four-piece rock band was also a departure from medium to large orchestras of the day, but the if it is about changing perception, this is a smart departure, not a cost saving one, in my humble opinion. Essentially, the band was part of the story telling, they are not mere musicians, but the history and time that observed these six women’s lives.
I surprisingly enjoyed Six. Maybe because I did not have any kind of hype but went in with an experimental heart. But there are no maybes for the solid production that the cast and the creative showcased.
Six is now showing at the Royal Theatre.
