Inside Six: The Musical, the pop concert-style theatre production about Henry VIII's six wives

At the time they were third-year students at Cambridge University and longing for more works that not only featured women, but also had them unapologetically taking up space on stage.

"We wanted something that was majoritively an all-female and/or non-binary cast on stage, who are all being hilarious, having lots of fun songs," Marlow says.

"And they were given a chance to take up loads of space and be hilarious and charismatic in a way that often boys are given a chance to do in lots of musicals, traditionally. Whereas ladies are usually given the chance to sing a sad love ballad, and then go off stage again."

They weren't the only ones having these types of conversations. It was part of a range of cultural dialogue in a year that would eventually see #MeToo at the forefront. And it was in this ecosystem of gender-orientated conversations that Marlow applied for the duo to create an original show for Cambridge to take to the Edinburgh Fringe.

They proposed a production that put women centre-stage - both figuratively and literally. And the story - or should we say, stories - chosen to do this? Those of the six wives of Henry XIII.

"We wanted to have a famous subject matter because it was going to be among thousands and thousands of shows and anything to stand out would have been good," Marlow says.

And such is the fairly humble beginning of Six: The Musical, a production that has unexpectedly - at least for its writers - become an international sensation.

Since its early days as a student production in a 100-seat room at Sweet Venue during the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe, Six has extended its reign and became a global phenomenon, playing to sold-out houses in London's West End and New York's Broadway.

Meanwhile, its studio album - which is part of the reason the musical has gained so many international fans in such a relatively short time - has had more than 450 million streams worldwide, been seen by more than 3 billion views on TikTok, and has recently reached gold status.

But for Marlow and Moss - who have seen the musical go from a student production done on a tight budget to hitting some of the biggest stages in the world - this success was something they couldn't have predicted.

"The intention was literally to do this production for a month at the Edinburgh Fringe and not embarrass ourselves or the people who are performing on stage. And also to try and not lose the musical theatre society at uni any money," Marlow says.

"It was the first time that Cambridge was going to take an original musical as the main musical to the Edinburgh Fringe. And we were like, 'Oh god, they've asked us to do it. Let's not f*** it up', and so that was the main goal.

"In the back of our minds, we were like, 'Imagine if a theatre from London, or some kind of concert venue upstairs at a pub, or something, wants us to do a night of us singing the songs. Wouldn't that be unreal?' And so that was the height of our expectations, which for an Edinburgh Fringe show would have been unbelievably cool. And so anything beyond that point that's happened has exceeded unbelievably cool in quite a big way."

A witty, pop-fuelled musical packed full of sass, Six remixes the history of the wives of Henry VIII - Britain's notorious Tudor king - as they take to the microphone to re-tell their stories and reclaim their her-stories. But rather than taking to the stage in a Tudor fashion, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr present their stories as pop singers.

Taking inspiration from some of the world's biggest pop singers, each queen has a distinctive sound and style. And although they sing original songs, you can hear traces of Adele in Jane Seymour's Heart of Stone, for example, and Katherine Howard's All You Wanna Do could easily be at home on Britney Spears' Circus album. Meanwhile, aesthetically, the entire production has the same feel as Beyonce's Live at Roseland show.

"We always knew it was going to be the big pop diva queens, the most famous, most powerful pop stars in the world, because that's kind of who the six wives were, and also it's what is objectively the best genre of pop music," Moss says.

"We always knew that Beyonce was obviously going to be at the forefront of all that, let's be real, but in terms of who each of them was, that was determined when we got into their stories and got into figuring out what we wanted to reframe about them and what we wanted to say about their lives.

"The stories then formed from what we extracted from the research kind of informed which pop stars were who, but it was always going to be your big commercial pop ladies that were going to inspire it."

It's an interesting redressing of history. A history remix, if you like.

Yes, it focuses on the lives of these women - without the presence of their husband, who has until now been at the centre of their stories - but it does so in a way that doesn't feel like a history lesson.

Part of that is because of the pop-concert wrapping this history is presented in. But it's also partly because the presentation of these women is unlike any other. Or, in the case of some of the lesser-known queens, it's the most notable representation.

It seems the stories of what went on between King Henry and his six wives have, over time, been reduced to a rhyme - divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.

But how many people know that Jane Seymour was the lady-in-waiting for both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn? Or that Catherine Parr was a published writer and encouraged women to be educated?

"A story that often gets told is that we, women, have always been the victims. But actually, throughout time, women have always been in charge of their own stories to an extent. And Catherine Parr was such an example of that," says Vidya Makan, who plays her in the Australian cast.

"She did these incredible things in a time where we're meant to believe that they weren't capable of that, but she was a real trailblazer."

This thread of realisation that things may not have been as we first thought them to be runs through Six. And it subtly points out that history has been written by men.

Six's interpretation of the queen who is probably the most well-known, Anne Boleyn, sees her not as a conniving woman with a big plan to get the crown, but a rebel who got in over her head, and fell into the sights of a man who had the power to literally behead you if you disappointed him.

Then there is Katherine Howard, played by Chelsea Dawson in the Australian cast. The fifth queen, and the second to get beheaded, was just 19 when she married 49-year-old King Henry, and in at least two other non-consensual relationships with older men before this.

"In the show, she kind of talks about these men and makes all these innuendos, and it's all very cheeky, and you just think that you're going to be in for a nice ride but then you do get the twist," Dawson says.

"I think there's something really powerful in getting to share that story. It's also a very repetitive song, so you get this repetitive notion of it happening over and over again.

"But also having the Britney Spears and Ariana Grande influence on the character, those are both two pop stars that were sexualised at a young age and were portrayed through the media through the male lens.

"And through history as well, the people who would have written the stories about Katherine Howard would have been the men. They were the ones with the education and the pens and paper to write down what was happening before them. So I think there's something really powerful in her rearranging that story and sharing it."

Six presents these female stories - pushing aside the male gaze that is so often present when telling women's history - as almost meta.

It's a story written by two young writers, neither of whom are the straight, white, older men who usually dominate the field, presented by women who are encouraged to make the roles their own, rather than sticking to a strict script.

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As Moss says, Six is not so much about the characters themselves, but rather the representation of the women performing, and more broadly, what this means for female characters in musicals.

If you compare the cast of Six over the different companies, all of the characters are slightly different. And comparisons can be made quite easily, as audience members are encouraged to film the encore (aka the Megasix) at the end of the show, with many videos finding their way to YouTube.

Not only do the American queens keep their accents, rather than opting for something more British - as do the Australian versions - there are nuances in the characters that change how the queens are presented, while still keeping the essence of each character alive.

And this probably extends from the encouragement the actors receive to find themselves within their characters.

"The show isn't really about the six wives. It's about the six, and now with the band on stage, the 10 women and non-binary people you see on stage, being in their moment to claim the space and make you listen and make you laugh and take control," Moss says.

"It's like the characters don't really exist without the actors. So whenever somebody new takes on the role, they're not really taking on the character so much as finding the elements of themselves within the character."

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