{"id":106383,"date":"2023-02-23T15:44:27","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T23:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=106383"},"modified":"2023-02-28T07:02:04","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T15:02:04","slug":"sixi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/sixi\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Six the musical’ details Henry VIII\u2019s abuses, successfully flips his wives into modern, rockin\u2019 feminists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The North American touring company of <\/em>Six, now playing at the Orpheum Theatre in\u00a0San Francisco. Photo by Joan Marcus.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Six wives? Holy history, that\u2019s three more than my<\/em> total.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t behead any, of course.<\/p>\n

Six the Musical<\/em> tackles that number (of Henry VIII wives) and turns the 500-year-old sorry saga into extraordinary entertainment \u2014 replete with fantastic vocal cords and rock chords, fantastic layered metallic costumes, and a fantastic light show.<\/p>\n

Henry, we\u2019re told, cut off two of his Tudor queens\u2019 heads and divorced two others. One died of natural causes. One survived.<\/p>\n

Despite that bleak-scape, Six the Musical<\/em> is pure escapism, feminist-style (since its point of view flips from the king to the women). And it gives attendees at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco a chance to steer clear of the reality of their own lives while it distorts the reality of what the show labels \u201cher-tory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Hamilton<\/em>, this is revisionist stuff. Big Time.<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s opening night audience couldn\u2019t care less, however, about evaluations, academic references, or the possibility that the presentation is in a sense a #metoo-ish reaction to Henry\u2019s abuses. The crowd was too busy screaming with glee and clapping wildly after each of the nine tunes \u2014 leaping, in fact, to a standing \u201co\u201d for the finale and<\/em> the \u201cencore\u201d that followed it with scads of glitter falling from the rafters.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Didi Romero (center) plays Katherine Howard in Six. Photo by Joan Marcus.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that the glitzy sextet morphs from being villainous or invisible \u2014 and supporting players in royal history \u2014 to being 21st Century females who can attain distaff empowerment. Accompanied by lots of clever sexual innuendos and mentions of being \u201cun-friended\u201d and TikTok and other digital entities.<\/p>\n

Featured characters are Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Catherine Parr. Each gets to hog the spotlight for a soliloquy in song. Each is modeled on modern pop artists that in a sense reflect her personal story (Rihanna, Beyonce, and Alicia Keys, for example).<\/p>\n

The gimmick is that they\u2019re competing \u2014 even to the point of nasty cat-fighting \u2014 to be lead singer of their girl band, ultimately a sisterhood of sassy, joking divas. The supposed test? Who had the worst time being Henry\u2019s wife?<\/p>\n

The theme of the plotless, intermission-less, concert-style, 80-minute, touring BroadwaySF presentation is \u201cdivorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived,\u201d a couplet based on a sing-song melody long favored by British kids.<\/p>\n

Lyrics more than once lean on forced rhymes, as when Anna of Cleves contends, \u201cYou said that I tricked ya\/\u2019Cause I, I didn\u2019t look like my profile pictcha.\u201d<\/p>\n

And laugh-lines in Six the Musical <\/em>aren\u2019t subtle. Consider this interchange: Jane Seymour asks what hurts more than a broken heart? Anne Boleyn responds, \u201cA severed head.\u201d Still, the show shows that beheadings can<\/em> be funny or entertaining \u2014 especially when they\u2019re merely conversational and not as lurid and in-your-face as scenes in Sweeney Todd<\/em> or Little Shop of Horrors<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On occasion, the subject matter here is<\/em> cringeworthy. Such as Katherine Howard explaining her molestation at age 13 and desire to be loved \u2014 including her attraction to Henry when she was 16 and he was 49, a geezer in those days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Olivia Donalson (center) portrays Anna of Cleves in Six. Photo by Joan Marcus.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

All that considered, the musical is much better than one might expect since it evolved from a concept-album concocted by two Cambridge University seniors, Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow, both triple-threats as playwrights, composers, and lyricists.<\/p>\n

Feminists should love that the four musicians on stage behind the six \u2014 the \u201cladies in waiting\u201d \u2014 are all women. They\u2019ll probably love as well that Catherine Parr details in \u201cI Don\u2019t Need Your Love\u201d that she managed to fight for female education and wrote books without the king.<\/p>\n

The musical, which won 23 awards during the 2021-22 Broadway season, including a Tony Award for best original score (music and lyrics), can\u2019t be taken too seriously. But seriously, you should head down<\/em> to the theatre \u2014 although I strongly urge you check out the lyrics online before going so that they won\u2019t miss a lot of the wordplay that zips by.<\/p>\n

Six the Musical<\/em> will play at the Orpheum Theatre, 1182 Market St., San Francisco, through March 19. Tickets start at $56. Info: 888-746-1799 or tickets@broadwaysf.com.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at<\/strong>\u00a0voodee@sbcglobal.net<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0or on his websites,<\/strong>\u00a0https:\/\/woodyweingarten.com<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and<\/strong>\u00a0https:\/\/vitality press.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0 The North American touring company of Six, now playing at the Orpheum Theatre in\u00a0San Francisco. Photo by Joan Marcus.   Six wives? Holy history, that\u2019s three more than my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":3.5,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-106383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-woody-weingarten"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"