Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived.

SIX the Musical presents King Henry VIII’s six wives reimagined as a modern pop group, retelling their story within the context of modern dating and relationships as they frivolously compete with one another to be the leading lady. The show was written in such a way it was a clever fusion of pop concert and musical theatre, the music and queens themselves being based on real pop artists. 

There is a certain irony in being presented with a story about six English queens who all speak in slight Australian accents; I’m sure it’s still a better option than American.

Along the same vein, there is also a fatalist irony in hearing the queens, who look very much alive and well, talking about their marriage to Henry and eventual deaths. Who doesn’t love continuously referring back to that time you got beheaded?    

The Queens, declaring themselves Ex-Wives in their opening number, fight back against the story that had always been told about them: the story that centered around the man they had married years ago. They unanimously reject the notion that their existence should be defined by their past relationship with the same man. 

“Listen up, let me tell you a story, a story that you think you've heard before

We know you know our names and our fame and our faces, know all about the glories and the disgraces

I'm done 'cause all this time, I've been just one word in a stupid rhyme

So I picked up a pen and a microphone, History's about to get overthrown”

Through their individual musical numbers, they set the record straight on their own experiences and the trauma that came from it. By setting the record straight through their individual songs they reclaim their own personal agency. They are able to call out the misogynistic double standards and patriarchal structures that caused them harm.

Anne Boleyn’s number Don’t Lose Your Head highlights the double standards around sexuality. As Anne chides, Henry had multiple mistresses, “Just sleeping around, like, what the hell?” Yet when she does anything remotely similar, "maybe I'll flirt with a guy or three, just to make him jell," she becomes the second part of a rhyme.

Anne of Cleaves story in Get Down alludes to the common complaint men have of women not looking like their dating profile, after Henry swipes right. Despite matching, he still selfishly complains. As if it was her fault that portraits painted by male artists from the Middle Ages up to the Renaissance adhere to patriarchal beauty standards rather than accurately showing her likeness.

The song All You Wanna Do from Katherine Howard epitomises the idea of women as objects to please men. 

“'Cause all you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby

Is touch me, love me, can't get enough, see

All you wanna do, All you wanna do, baby

Is please me, squeeze me, birds and the bees me

Run your fingers through my hair, Tell me, I'm the fairest of the fair

Playtime's over

The only thing you wanna do is...”   

We see the queens all collectively poke a little fun at the man that had caused them years' worth of trauma in the form of a subtle jibe about the size of Henry VIII's prick. 

Before their final number they almost conclude that their story is what it is, but ultimately they have to remind themselves that this is their show and they’re in control of their own story. And they fucking own it. They take back control as they rewrite their own stories. SIX creates an imaginative and dignifying alternate reality of what they would have become had they lived in a later time.

“It's the end of the show, of the historemix

We switched up the flow and we changed the prefix

Everybody knows that we used to be six wives

But we want to say before we drop the curtain

Nothing is for sure, nothing is for certain

All that we know is that we used to be six wives”

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