Tag Archives: Six The Musical

REVIEW: Movies to Musicals – Theatre Royal, Glasgow

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Director: Ross Gunning

Choreographer: Rebecca Curbelo Valdivia

It’s a brave producer indeed who puts a cast of young performers on the same stage as the very best of the best of the West End. Brave or foolish you might say, but Ross Gunning has gathered the cream of young, triple threat, musical theatre talent in Scotland together and boy do they deliver the goods.

This entire production Movies to Musicals exudes quality from curtain up to curtain down.

The choice of songs is inspired: opening on A Musical from recent Broadway smash, the Shakespeare spoof, Something Rotten (a musical that’s only had one staging in the UK at Birmingham Rep in 2021), it starts on a high and continues to build.

The rousing opening is followed by Queen of the West End, Louise Dearman singing She Used to be Mine from Waitress. Dearman is as good as it gets in musical theatre. There’s no better role model to aspire to. It is an inspiring choice by Gunning, but that’s not all, next up is fellow Wicked alumni Laura Pick who belts out the classic Don’t Rain on my Parade.

This masterclass is followed by the young cast performing a medley from the world-conquering Hamilton. This is a stunning presentation and it is accompanied by incredibly clever choreography from Rebecca Curbelo Valdivia, it is clearly inspired by original choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, but injects its own originality and freshness. Of note too are the young soloists on Quiet Uptown – just glorious.

Alistair Brammer the third of the night’s guest artists, beautifully performs Why God Why and Last Night of the World with Laura Pick, from one of the musicals he is most synonymous with Miss Saigon.

The quality just keeps on coming: songs from The Prom, A Little Night Music, Jesus Christ Superstar and Wicked (a rare treat to have former Elphaba, Laura Pick and the only actor who has every played the two feature roles in Wicked (Glinda and Elphaba) Louise Dearman, sing an outstanding Defying Gravity to bring the curtain down on Act One.

Act Two gets off to a flying start with a captivating trio of highlights from Wicked which includes the young ensemble and our two leading ladies and Brammer who played Fiyero in Wicked to great acclaim. Again, to choreographer Curbelo Valdivia’s credit, the choreography remains tight, no mean feat with such a large cast. 

We are treated to songs from TV show Smash, The Greatest Showman, Les Mis, Jersey Boys, A Star is Born, an instrumental interlude Gabriel’s Oboe from The Mission and the out-right, hands-down smash of the evening, a medley from arguably Britain’s best new musical of the last decade, Six. To say this reviewer was blown away was an understatement, more like knocked out. The six young women who performed this were as good as any professional cast I’ve seen of this musical and it’s a musical I have seen a lot.

It takes a helluva lot of hutzpah to mix West End and Broadway performers of great acclaim with young, up and coming performers. Producer Ross Gunning has that hutzpah, and it has paid off. This is a class act, Rolls Royce quality from start to end. The only negative thing is that it will be next year before we can enjoy it again. Unmissable.

REVIEW: SIX – Theatre Royal, Glasgow

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Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.

Aragorn, Boleyn, Seymour, Cleves, Howard, Parr.

Six women, six British Queens, reduced to six words in a rhyme.

Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss give sassy 21st Century voices to these six Tudor queens.

Written in ten working days, Six the Musical has been an eye-watering, head-spinning success since its appearance in 2017 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was performed by the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society. Since then it has had a UK tour, several runs in the West End, been produced Off-Broadway, had a US tour, a run on Norwegian Cruise Lines that will continue to 2022, and will appear on Broadway, Australia, Canada and in Chicago and Minnesota in 2020. It is currently on its second UK-wide tour.

It is a sassy celebration of womanhood as these Queens get to reclaim their own her-story 500 years on. Long defined by who their husband was, it’s now time to tell their own tales.

Inevitable comparisons will be made with theatrical juggernaut Hamilton which also mixes 21st century music with historical subject material. However, Six manages to plough its own original and irresistible furrow. Staged like a mash-up between a stadium concert and a musical, it blends spot-on humour and cleverly delivered history with a refreshing dose of self-awareness. Each Queen gets her chance to stand centre stage and state her case in an X-Factor style competition to see who had it worse at the hands of the infamous Henry. These women are here to kick ass and tell all. This they do in an array of musical genres, a blend of pop, rock ballad, R&B, soul and electro euro-pop (the hysterical Kraut-rock/House mash up Haus of Holbein) and all backed by an all-female band, The Ladies in Waiting.

Each of the six women playing these six queens is thoroughly talented and shine equally, a rare and wonderful thing to see on stage and despite the competitiveness, it’s ultimately a show of sisterhood. This is a girl gang you really want to join.

After the defiant intro number Ex-Wives, Lauren Drew (Catherine of Aragon) starts the ball rolling with the sassy No Way followed by Maddison Bulleyment’s hysterical Anne Boleyn delivering the Lily Allen-ish Don’t Lose Your Head, including the lyrics: “I tried to elope but the Pope said ‘nope'” and “everybody chill, it’s totes God’s will”. Lauren Byrne (Jane Seymour) tugs at the heart-strings in the power ballad Heart of Stone. Shekinah McFarlane (Anna of Cleves) gives us the Rhianna-like Get Down and delivers the laughs with: “I’m the Queen of the castle, get down you dirty rascals” when ‘exiled’ to a life of luxury and independence after her divorce from Henry. Jodie Steele delivers Katherine Howard’s All You Wanna Do, with defiance, the lyrics make you question (in light of the #MeToo movement) has anything really changed for women in the past 500 years? And sheds new perspective on how she has been remembered in history. Athena Collins brings the women’s stories to an end absolutely beautifully with Catherine Parr’s Beyoncé-like torch song I Don’t Need Your Love. Each of these woman has is a power-house vocalist and could tear up any stage. That said, the songs they are asked to deliver are hard not to love and as catchy as hell. The rousing Six and Megasix mash-up brings the house to its feet to get down at the end.

Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s choreography is sharp, original and modern, and perfectly executed by the cast. Gabriella Slade’s costume design is Ariana Grande does Tudor and it works fabulously, as does Emma Bailey’s simplistic but effective, concert-style set design and Tim Deiling’s rich lighting.

The face-off between the women is definitely a twisted sisterhood, they each fling the other’s sob story back in their faces, but this show of fierce womanhood is utterly irresistible. The dawning realisation by each woman that they only claim their place in history because of the man they married, reduced to: “just one word in a stupid rhyme” is actually heart-breaking. Thankfully they get “five more minutes” to set the record straight and send the audience to the street on an absolute high.

The succinct story telling packs a punch and the compact 75-minute running time is audience friendly. Marlow and Moss prove again that HISTORY + MUSICAL THEATRE = HIT. They have successfully distilled 500 year-old history into a perfect piece of entertainment for the 21st Century. Having seen it several times now, Six remains one of the best things out there and stands up to repeated viewings (something this reviewer is never keen on).

It’s a welcome breath of fresh air in a fog of tired, relentlessly touring, mediocre musicals. Get a ticket while you can, you won’t regret it.

Runs until 10th November 2019 at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow

review originally published at The Reviews Hub