Six, the critically acclaimed musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, amalgamates the life stories of Henry VIII’s six wives into a 75 minute phenomenal show that highlights there is so much more to these six women than the man they all married.

Six the musical is styled much like a concert where the queens spend the show performing as the girl band, Six, competing as to who has had it the worst in their lives. Due to their marriage some lost their freedom, some their prior relationships and some… their heads. The cast is made up of: Jarneia Richards-Noel (Catherine of Aragon), Millie O’Connell (Anne Boleyn), Natalie Paris (Jane Seymour), Alexia McIntosh (Anna of Cleves), Aimie Atkinson (Katherine Howard) and Maiya Quansah-Breed (Catherine Parr) who all have impressive vocal skills and perform each of their songs with passion. The queens individual personalities really shine through in these actresses performances. They are accompanied by a group of equally talented musicians, the all-female band, made up of: Alice Angliss (Drums), Amy Shaw (Guitar) and Terri De Marco (Bass).

Each queen gets their chance to sing a summary of their life in an amusing and clever pop song or ballad in the style of an already famous singer, for example Anne Boleyn’s ‘Don’t lose your head’ is told with inspiration from Lilly Allen and Avril Levigne. Each song is accompanied by an incredibly slick and polished dance routine as well as sections of banter the queens have between songs.

The musical was originally created by Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow who wanted ‘to provide a different perspective on the six queens separate form their status as wives’ and wanted to give ‘female historical figures a voice to tell their own experiences’. This is well conveyed during the whole musical. Though at odds with each other in the beginning the queens connect over their shared experiences and finish the show with a song about writing their own story separate to that of Henry’s, highlighting the point that they are each there own person.

We all know the rhyme the, ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced beheaded, survived’ but this show proves that these women were more than that, with lines from the songs like, “All this time, they’ve been just one word in a stupid rhyme, so they picked up a pen and a microphone, history’s about to get overthrown”.

This musical, which shows at the Arts theatre in London, is a very fun and inventive way of getting the people of today interested in history no matter who you are, there is something in it for everyone.