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We sit surrounded by the youngest audience anywhere on Broadway, all vibrating with excitement.
Theres a cloud of stage fog.
The pink-and-purple lights intensify.
Do you hear a cheeky little harpsichord?
Is it playing … Greensleeves?
Suddenly theres a noise like a growling, fast-approaching pop-rock avalanche.
After all this time,Six: The Musicalis back.
Theres not much perceptible difference between that 2020 event and the triumphant one this September.
Vocally, the first and last wives bracket the show with two astonishments.
Sixwears its origins on its (puffed, pierced) sleeve.
It began, though, at the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society as a show for the Edinburgh Fringe.
The thing feels intimate, private jokey, for the squad.
Tom Currans orchestrations include references to everything from pop hits to madrigals.
Its these small things that reward repeat encounters, memorization, bedroom sing-alongs.
The political message is therefore a little Easy-Bake, a little shallow, a little wishful.
Claim your power, ladies!
Even if your reality is the headsmans block!
The point ofSixis its escapism.
Even the sheer brightness ofSixoperates as color therapy.
Tim Deilings lights are red and purple and gold, bathing your hungry pores.
So let the cares of this world roll away.
Heck, let the cares of 16th-century England dissolve.
This is one liberation in which you dont have to lift a finger.
Queens are doing it for themselves.
Six: The Musicalis at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
