July 12th – 23rd
Divorced, beheaded, died
Divorced, beheaded, survived
And tonight we are LIVE!
SIX is the show your excitable young Anglophile niece has been telling you all about for going on six years now. The premise: The six wives of Henry VIII have gathered to put on a concert where they will prove which of them suffered the most at the hands of their infamous husband. The music, costumes, and vibes are all modern, and each of the wives has a pop/R&B equivalent to give them their own special shine, spark, and attitude. Jane Seymour is an Adele/Celine Dion-esque belter, while Catherine of Aragorn fits more into the Beyoncé mold, Katherine Howard is a Britney/Ariana sendup, and so on and so forth. Backed up by an entirely female band, it’s a wickedly funny, emotionally resonant, and head-bobbing night of performance.
It’s also a crowdpleaser designed for families; at the Broadway performance I attended, I’d estimate that the audience was 50% young girls in princess dresses having the time of their lives and falling in love with live theatre, while the adults chuckled and smiled at the cleverness of the score. Even better? The show is barely 80 minutes long, including the climactic (and very British musical theatre) megamix of the show so far, so you’ll be home long before bedtime.
With music, lyrics, and books by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, SIX started as a commission by the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society (Marlow and Moss were still students at the time), then became a hit at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, then took the West End by storm, and then was about to kill on Broadway in March of 2020 when the pandemic closed it the day of its scheduled opening night performance. Finally opening stateside for the 2021-2022 Broadway season, it ended up winning two Tony Awards (Score and Costumes) and would have won more were it not for the incredibly worthy and innovative A Strange Loop opening in the same season.
It took a while for the tour to arrive in Seattle, but now you can finally surprise that little girl in your life (or inside you) with tickets.
💌 Be Our Pen Pal! Find out what’s happening in Seattle by subscribing to our newsletter.
