About the work
A pop musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, premiered in 2017 at the Edinburgh Fringe. The six wives of Henry VIII appear in the form of a pop concert and compete over which of them suffered the most — and may thereby become the band's frontwoman.
Plot
Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr take the stage together as a pop girl group and vie in solo numbers for the title of most tragic fate. With each song clichés are deconstructed, until in the end the women realise that they no longer wish to be defined by their husband, and rewrite their stories together.
Cultural significance
Six became an international phenomenon of the late 2010s and early 2020s and brought a young, pop-minded generation into music theatre. The piece is celebrated as a feminist rereading of Tudor history and as a response to classic musicals in which women are often mere decoration.