Review: "SIX: The Musical" Still Shines at Dr. Phillips Center

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The sheer staying power of a one-act concert musical has led to its continued endurance on stages in the West End and Broadway, along with tours running internationally to this day.

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Four years ago, SIX: THE MUSICAL came to Dr. Phillips Center and immediately became an instant favorite for this reviewer. My original review posited that I’d listen to the cast recording for a couple weeks. That was a complete underestimation, as SIX has become part of my regular rotation on morning commutes. If I’m not listening to 1A on NPR or my oft-played Legends of the Fall score soundtrack CD, it’s likely to be SIX or seven other Broadway albums I always keep on the ready. The sheer staying power of a one-act concert musical has led to its continued endurance on stages in the West End and Broadway, along with tours running internationally to this day. Heck, even a pro-shot of the original West End cast (recorded in 2022) was theatrically released last year in the UK, with a US release set for this coming August.

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The enduring popularity of SIX can be found in its unique approach to concept musical. The show doesn’t play within the confines of reality. All these characters are dead, to begin with. And they’re all Renaissance era women who communicate through twenty-first century pop artists. Oh, and they also are pitted against each other in a trauma-dumping battle royale. On paper, the concept seems ridiculous. And yet, thankfully, it works extremely well. History has never felt so exciting, so fist-pumping, so lip-sync-battle worthy. Sure, Hamilton gives us United States history entirely through hip-hop and rap. But SIX eschews any semblance to traditional historical retelling by turning elementary school rhyme into high-energy rock concerts that never fails to engage the audience on an emotional level as much as it does an intellectual one. Not to pit the two musicals against each other, but Hamilton will spend twenty minutes looking into the minutiae of one aspect of our founding fathers, while SIX options up to tell each wife’s story more thriftily through wholly unique approaches of both history and commentary.

An audience could easily eat up a two-act musical in the formula SIX provides – each wife sharing their story through song – but knows to also not give us too much of a good thing. Ironically, giving these women less time than Hamilton does allows the audience to always want more. They never wear out their welcome as a result, while also offering even more commentary on the broader theme of the musical: how women are always, unfortunately, sidelined or dismissed in the first “version” of history. I have always loved this show’s clever way of reframing all the known history of the Tudor era into a relatable criticism of how women are often defined in world events based on their association with men. SIX allows us to finally put the spotlight on their accomplishments and neuroses, informing us how even their choices – or lack of them – still gave them some level of power in shaping the course of human history.

Consider, for example, how Catherine of Aragon ( Emma Elizabeth Smith ) did absolutely nothing wrong as a wife. She was dutiful, loyal, and a model figure of submission in an era where such qualities were ideal for a spouse. The only thing “wrong” with her was more a biological hiccup than anything else – she conceived a daughter, Mary. She displays her righteous indignation with both Henry and “the system” when she gets replaced with Anne Boleyn. Even if she did everything right, even if she played by all the rules of what a woman should be in her time, she still ended up tossed aside because her gender was otherwise powerless in matters of state. It’s no wonder she felt wronged by her husband, and wanting to curry favor within the fictional SIX concert for leader of the girl group.

Next, we have a woman ahead of her time: Anne Boleyn ( Nella Cole ). For all intents and purposes, she was born in the wrong century. This was someone who knew how to use her own femininity to her benefit. Rather than serve merely as a mistress to the king, she literally influenced him to create the Church of England in order to put herself in a position of power as the king’s wife. And unlike women of her era, Anne Boleyn never shied away from the men who interested her. She could be a flirt, but at the end of the day, she remained faithful to her husband. And, by golly, she tried to give him a son multiple times. Five miscarriages worked against her, along with his suspicions of her having affairs. He fabricated the claim of infidelity in order to use her own femininity against her to justify both her execution and his marriage to a third wife. Why should a wife suffer for a husband’s inability to successfully impregnate her?

Women’s suffering would become the emotional throughline of Jane Seymour ( Kelly Denice Taylor ). Unlike the other wives of SIX, Jane has become somewhat of an apologist for Henry’s behavior towards them. It could be naivete, or it could be her own form of self-preservation, but she opted to look at Henry through the good he provided for her. She loved him unconditionally, even if he loved his wives with that same conditional need: to give him a son. Jane Seymour was the only one to succeed at that, though it came at the expense of her own life. Had literally any of Henry’s previous wives been successful at siring a son, Jane Seymour ’s story could have played out very differently. Yet, because of her husband’s stubbornness and faults and two failed marriages, she suffers and pays for it with her own life.

There is some karmic justice to how Henry wronged his fourth wife, Anna of Cleves ( Hailey Alexis Lewis ), as he essentially divorced her but still kept her living in relative luxury for the rest of her life. It’s so gratifying to know that a man has wronged yet another wife – all because he wasn’t attracted to her anymore – and now has to pay through the nose for it. Anna of Cleves’s post-Henry life literally was as a lady of the court who still had favour with the king, even if she no longer had to bear the burden of being married to him. Of the six wives, Anna always felt like the one whose only suffering was her pride. Yet she owns her status, knowing that she might have been one of the lucky ones among the notches on Henry’s belt. She didn’t lose her head or her life whilst married to him, even having the last laugh by outliving Henry by a good ten years.

Katherine Howard ( Caroline Siegrist ), Wife-o No. 5, could perhaps bear the depressing mantle of being the wife most wronged not just by Henry, but by all the men in her life. History typically painted her as reckless, not just because of her age (she was still a teenager when she married a 49-year-old Henry VIII), but also because official records cited her (suspected) infidelity as the reason for her execution. More modern approaches to historical facts paint a different picture. Instead, we meet a woman who’d been groomed, abused, and objectified long before Henry came along. And the “reckless” reputation she once had has now transformed into a tragic backstory, one that shows how men with power took advantage of her – with Henry merely the latest.

Just as karmic justice seemed to reward Anna of Cleves, it also rewards Catherine Parr ( Tasia Jungbauer ) by sheer virtue of outliving her husband. One aspect of Catherine’s story that I had forgotten was how she never actually loved Henry VIII. Rather, she was always in love with Thomas Seymour (Jane’s own brother), only marrying Henry VIII for stability and companionship as he made her “an offer she couldn’t refuse.” And it’s Catherine Parr who, within SIX, is the voice of reason among the wives. None of them should beat each other up because they all married the same guy. None of them had faults that made them ex-wives. If anything, it’s through Catherine’s less-infatuated view of Henry that the wives realize: we never needed him. And now, we’ve outlasted him. History knows our names just as well as, if not better than, they know his.

Five hundred years of an embarrassing nursery rhyme has become rewritten to allow these women to take back their roles, their actions, their wants and desires. Instead of history painting them as insufficient wives to the man that spearheaded the English Reformation, SIX gives us a more nuanced understanding of how one man – insecure, extremely stubborn, and suspicious – has wronged six women in his life all for his own, selfish pursuits of an heir. The success of SIX rests not in the notion that it is rewriting history, but rather in offering a way to re-examine historical fact to find the hidden truths that were there all along. And, of course, set them to iconic and incomparable songs that teach it all to an audience in ninety minutes. SIX as a story is a cerebral and intellectually stimulating lesson in Tudor era politics. But SIX as a concert? Definitely one of the best experiences an audience member can have.

Even if you’re not here for the approach history, you will never be disappointed in a SIX concert experience. It knows how to deliver great showmanship through their primary six performers, the brazzle-dazzle of their costumes, and the live “ladies in waiting” band that bring It just as much as the ex-wives do. As this was my second time seeing SIX, it meant that I could think about this show less as “oh, what is this about?” and more as “Yay, my favorite song is coming up!” Ranking the nine songs would be a difficult task as each one has their own unique strengths that make them stand out from each other. Whether it’s the clever wordplay of “Don’t Lose Ur Head” or the stirring melody of “Heart of Stone” or the vibrant energy of “All You Wanna Do,” every song in SIX emulates iconic pop and R&B stars of the twenty-first century with great success. Thanks to my rampant playing of the cast recording in my car for the last four years, I knew these lyrics and chords and riffs intimately well, silently lip-syncing along to favorites. Occasionally, I’d even outright sing along to more memorable bops even if I did so off-key and forgetting a word or two because I was so caught up in watching the spectacle. (Sitting in row two and having my quiet sing-along drowned out by those mic’d on stage also helped.)

Truly, it’s the performers of SIX who should be recognized, not my contributions from the audience. The 2026 “Boleyn Tour” cast includes a whole new crop of queens who bring It to every performance, delivering the same energy and diva-ness on the stage as the ex-wives I saw perform here four years prior. Emma Elizabeth Smith ’s approach to Catherine of Aragon differed enough from the last tour to feel fresh and new, as she made her version of the first wife play more embittered and regretful. As a result, “No Way” was delivered with this ferocity that made her unforgettable in the role. Nella Cole ’s version of Anne Boleyn likewise leaned more into the character’s feisty nature, thus turning “Don’t Lose Ur Head” into the most comically fun number of the night. She had a lot of fun with the cleverness of the wordplay; I still love whenever any Anne Boleyn says “pret a manger” in SIX.

If I were forced to pick a favorite song in SIX, despite claiming it would be difficult, it would always be “Heart of Stone.” Occasionally during my morning commutes to work, I may opt to skip the song in playback because it never fails to make me cry when the lyrics reach “ ‘Cause like a river r

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/orlando/article/Review-SIX-THE-MUSICAL-at-Dr-Phillips-Center-For-The-Performing-Arts-20260604)._