Arts Theatre – 22 January. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
This pop-concert musical about Henry VIII’s wives is fantastic fierce fun, changing history into HERstory with flair and attitude.
Everybody remembers the divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived rhyme, but in SiX the wives get to step into the limelight and decide to tell their sob stories so that the audience can vote for the wife that has suffered the most to become the lead singer of the group.
Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss have created an exuberant celebration of the women in the shadow of the king, giving a sassy twist to everything we think we know about these women. Renée Lamb is a total diva as Catherine of Aragon, demanding to know what exactly she did to deserve Henry’s shoddy treatment of her in a barnstorming number, followed by Christina Modestou’s take on Anne Boleyn as a text speaking girl who just wanted to have fun in the hysterical “Don’t Lose Ur Head”. Linking the numbers is some bitchy banter between the queens that is a little hit and miss, but there are some cracking one-liners, mostly from the younger wives, Anne and Katherine Howard.
There is a sudden and complete change in tone as Jane Seymour tells her story, with Natalie Paris showing her impeccable vocal skills in her power ballad, perhaps a linking ensemble number could lessen the jarring change? The standout queen of the show is Anne of Cleves (Genesis Lynea). Let’s face it, we all know the story of the Holbein portrait, but not much about her life after divorce. SiX has a wonderfully bonkers number “Haus of Holbein” showing the selection of a wife from her “profile picture” before Anne sings about her “terrible” life as a divorcee – the gleeful “Queen of the Castle” showcases her life of wealth and privilege in Richmond with loads of swagger. Aimie Atkinson’s Katherine Howard is a brilliantly imagined teenage hedonist, with the empty repetition of her romances finally becoming clear in a moment of clarity at the end of her song. These feisty characters pale into insignificance when the survivor, Catherine Parr takes centre stage. Izuka Hoyle quietly and calmly describes her life of widowhood and lost love as she is chosen by Henry, and her number begins as a letter to her love before morphing into an angry wail against Henry and the misogyny of the Tudor age. This is where the feminist message truly leaps to the fore, making the previous girl power moments in the show seem very flimsy and vacuous, which is exactly as it should be. This was a queen who entered the marriage with eyes open, and tried to use her position to change things for the better.
The energy of the cast is phenomenal, and this carries the audience along on a huge wave of enthusiasm and joy. But there are issues with the show that need to be addressed. As much fun as the musical numbers are, a few are at least one chorus too long. In a fully staged show, with tighter choreography and more business going on, you could just about get away with the songs as they are now, maybe. But with this staging, a bit of judicious editing may be advisable. The script also relies a little too heavily on the ladies snarking at each other. Yes, this makes the big feminist message of the finale more heart-warming as they band together, but it does fall into the stereotyped bitchiness of ex-wives and girlfriends being in the same room. A little more light and shade would gel the show together.
SiX is a great night out, and after a little polish, has the potential to become a jewel in the crown of musical theatre. I hope it gets a longer run soon.