Betrayed? Beheaded? So what. The queens now have their court.
“Six,” the 85-minute musical that began U.S. life here at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, landed on Broadway just before the great pandemic affliction and now has opened its first national tour in Chicago with an extended run in the needy Loop theater district, has all the makings of a cultish attraction that people want to attend again and again.
I’ve seen “Six” three times now. The first two times, audiences responded with enthusiasm and excitement to what is, unequivocally, a really great idea for a commercial musical: Brits Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss took the format of “Britain’s Got Talent” or “American Idol,” and built a mock-concert show around the famous sextet of wives of 16th century England’s Henry VIII — who bond in a post-death sisterhood and compete for who actually had the worst time with their bearded pig. The wives are reimagined with performative personas close to the divas Beyoncé, Adele, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande and Alicia Keys. They first compete for attention and finally arrive at the conclusion that their strength lies in their own collective selves. They have a point. Nobody remembers the names or the fates of the wives of any other Tudor monarchs.
The other super-smart thing about this show, which I ponder every time, is how the creators keep everything light, self-aware and empowering, even though the historical fate of these women is not exactly obvious fare for musical comedy. It relies on chronological distance and clever self-protection and it works exactly as planned.
When I first reviewed “Six,” pre-pandemic, I saw the show’s cleverness but thought it would need more substance added for Broadway. Wrong. It turns out 85 minutes suits everyone fine and the premise never has time to become worn out. The show just rocks along and, by now, audience members clearly have developed responses to many of the lines: most of the people around me Tuesday night were not hearing this score for the first time. Oh, no.
These ancient characters, now played in a young and stellar touring cast by the especially excellent Khaila Wilcoxon as Catherine of Aragon, Storm Lever as Anne Boleyn, Jasmine Forsberg as Jane Seymour, Olivia Donalson as Anne of Cleves, Didi Romero as Katherine Howard, and Gabriela Carrillo as sardonic survivor Catherine Parr, have become Snapchat-able mashups of history and celebrity. The costume designer, Gabriella Slade, deserves a lot of that credit for the way she manifest these characters. That’s the design element on which the show relies.
You don’t get a score for the ages: I hear echoes of both “Matilda” and “Hamilton” in the music, but then all shows are in conversations with their predecessors. And all shows are dependent on timing: “Six” arrived at what seemed like the wrong moment, but was actually precisely the right one.
It hits all the demographics hit shows always need. Like “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Mean Girls,” this one catches a ton of moms and daughters, and it also has the date-night cred of “Hamilton.”
It’s a celebration of, as they say, “her-story,” and you can clap and party along in this upbeat re-mash of history and lively smash-up of 600 years of patriarchal, monarchial power plays. Times “Six.”
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Six the Musical”
When: Through July 3
Where: CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.
Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Tickets: $39-$119 at 800-775-2000 and www.broadwayinchicago.com