United States SIX (Lyrics, Music and Ebook by Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss): Girls in Ready Band. Broward Middle for the Performing Arts, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 11.10.2022. (SL)
Manufacturing:
Administrators – Lucy Moss & Jamie Armitage
Units – Emma Bailey
Costumes – Gabriella Slade
Lighting – Tim Deiling
Choreographer – Carrie-Anne Ingrouille
Solid:
Catherine of Aragon – Khaila Wilcoxon
Anne Boleyn – Storm Lever
Jane Seymour – Jasmine Forsberg
Anna of Cleves – Olivia Donalson
Katherine Howard – Didi Romero
Catherine Parr – Gabriela Carrillo
What initially started as a small manufacturing on the Edinburgh Fringe Competition has grown into the worldwide phenomenon that’s SIX. The comedic reimagining of the story of the six wives of Henry VIII has now launched into a tour of the USA that opened in Fort Lauderdale.
When the curtain lifts, viewers see a stage that’s extra paying homage to a pop live performance than a Broadway musical, with the wives decked out in full pop-star regalia and a few Tudor parts combined in. One of the vital artistic situations of this epoch-fusing aesthetic is when the stage lighting is used to create an phantasm of Henry VIII shopping via Hans Holbein portraits seeking love as if he have been swiping via Tinder profiles.
The playbill offers the viewers a debrief on the six wives, their causes of demise and the modern-day divas that impressed their onstage personalities. The frequent false impression that Henry VIII murdered all of his wives is addressed within the opening tune. ‘Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’ is chanted by every of the queens in a way that’s paying homage to ‘The Cell Block Tango’ from Chicago. The mnemonic is begrudgingly repeated by the respective queens as if they’re bored with being identified just for their reason behind demise and the person to whom they have been married.
The musical shortly reveals itself to be a ‘histo-remix’ because the opening tune says, with the queens expressing their want to be remembered for extra than simply the methods they died. They then proceed to serenade the viewers with songs about their lives in a contest to find out who had it the worst with Henry VIII. The competitors runs for 80 minutes straight with no intermission, in a mode that’s akin to a twenty-first- century pop live performance. It virtually feels extra like an episode of American Idol than a typical musical, one thing that people who find themselves not sometimes keen on musicals may discover interesting. All the songs are paying homage to every of the queens’ respective pop-star influences, giving us tunes that sound like they arrive from a Tudor Rihanna, Beyoncé or Arianna Grande.
Close to the tip, after every queen has executed her tune, they arrive to a realization that will have been evident to the viewers all alongside. The ladies start to acknowledge that their tragedies shouldn’t be used as fodder for competitors, and that they need to deal with celebrating their very own histories as a substitute of all the time discussing their lives in relation to Henry VIII. As Anne Boleyn feedback: ‘Because the solely factor now we have in frequent is our husband, grouping us is an inherently comparative act and, as such, unnecessarily elevates a historic strategy ingrained in patriarchal buildings’.
Irrefutably, SIX is a good time for all and makes you concentrate on how historical past is advised to us. The performers showcase their implausible vocal skills with songs that may entertain you and problem the way in which you keep in mind the previous.
Samuel Loetscher