Review: SIX, Playhouse, Liverpool

SIX by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool

By Ken Powell

Let’s get straight to the elephant in the room: SIX is weird. There’s no getting around that – and nor should we want to get around it. It is shamelessly, gloriously bizarre from start to finish, and all the better for it.

For a start off, the ‘six’ to whom the title refers are no longer quite the starlets they were in, well (ahem), in ‘my day’. There used to be a time when the Tudor period was the staple of every school student’s history lessons along with 1066 and all that. Nowadays, twenty-year-olds will sing ‘1066’ at you oblivious to the fact the advert they will sing at you is playing on what used to be ‘common knowledge’. Likewise, the infamous Henry VIII and his penchant for getting rid of wives ‘one way or another’ is less well known as it used to be. “Do you remember us from your GCSEs?” one of the SIX shouts to the audience to great laughter. The answer to that will be increasingly “No!”, I suspect, in years to come.

But not yet. Right now – and here in Liverpool – the answer is still enough of “Yes – and we want more!” to make sense of the next hour and twenty minutes. And what a hugely entertaining ride that time is.

Then there is the oddity of the subject matter in depth. While Jennifer Caldwell (playing Anne Boleyn) revels in reminding everyone ‘he’ cut her head off and makes decapitation hilarious, even the characters themselves realise – towards the end – that fighting over who had more miscarriages is too dark to be funny. Add to this, imprisonments, childbirth and, ultimately, sexual abuse, and you’ve got a very strange thing going on there on the stage.

And yet it works. It really works. There is not a moment where something isn’t going on and it is always funny, or at least fun. It’s absolutely true that Tudor history has never been so outrageous. Indeed, another oddity of this production is that it barely feels like a musical at all. There’s no real ‘story’ – other than the prop of there being a kind of competition over who was the best wife. Actually, there’s six stories, and they’re told out one by one. What you do get instead is much more akin to a pop concert and the audience seems to know this from the very beginning, going nuts from the opening right to the end. I half expected everyone to be up on their feet dancing within seconds, and they actually do exactly that for the final numbers. So did I – if you can call my ‘Dad shuffle’ dancing.

The only problem I find with the whole concept is something acknowledged by the writers themselves. For a show glorying in women’s stories (‘her’ story not ‘his’ story) and revelling in the power of female emancipation, it can’t help but actually all be about ‘him’ – the husband of them all. The characters do come to terms with this near the end and give their take on it, but it isn’t so convincing. Henry doesn’t quite get to be the ‘bit part’ that would have been nice to see. But then, perhaps that is impossible and I’m asking too much. Perhaps the important point is that he is a disembodied figure, referred to in only the most derogatory terms for most of the show. To be so dismissed, I think, would make old Henry turn in his grave, to be honest.

I suspect, however, that no one in the audience cared a jot about all that though and, if I’m honest, it’s not the end of the world for me either. You just enjoy these six amazing performers doing their stuff with immense energy, backed by three equally impressive musicians, It’s just such energetic fun you have to remember to listen properly to the words of the songs (all of which are super catchy) otherwise you really would simply be at a girl band concert.

I’m not sure who worked the hardest however. While all the girls bounce around for the entire time and the musicians never stop playing, it is perhaps the lighting desk which beats them all. Not a single cue missed – and there must have been hundreds if not thousands – despite every few seconds there being some kind of change in dance, chorus, or simply an arm gesture needing specific lighting. There’s not a moment’s rest for anyone in this production.

Finally, the last weird thing is that the audience all left not feeling tired after all that screaming, cheering, dancing and whatnot, but buzzing and very possibly ready to enjoy a still relatively early evening in Liverpool’s excellent nightlife which, even on a cold Wednesday night, is full of people enjoying lots that’s going on. Perhaps this is the greatest gift the performers gave us: a joy of life, fully lived, whatever your personal circumstances might be. Can’t ask for more than that.

SIX is showing at The Playhouse until Sunday 8 Jan 2023. To find out more call the Box Office on 0151 709 4776 or visit Everyman & Playhouse.