‘SIX The Musical Live!’ or — Better Than ‘Hamilton’?

I’m sure you can imagine the crushing disappointment I experienced whilst sitting in the cinema this morning and realising that the concert film ‘SIX The Musical Live!’ (2025) would not be a theatrical staging of Rick Wakeman’s classic album ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII’ aimed at middle-aged prog rock fans but, instead, a pop musical primarily aimed at… GULP!… teenager girls and women! From the second it started I knew there wouldn’t be a seven-minute-long keyboard solo in sight.

‘SIX The Musical Live!’ is a simple and straightforward concept that does nothing terribly original in terms of musical theatre as six performers take turns to sing a song about what it was like to be one of Henry VIII’s famous wives, and that’s about it. Group numbers bookend the performances, the music is generic pop in the extreme and the lyrics self-consciously hip with references to selfies, dating profile photos and other contemporary phenomena.

It should all be unbearably excruciating and utterly intolerable, yet what makes ‘SIX The Musical Live!’ work is the sheer amount of energy on display and a bucket-load of infectious “rizz”, meaning ‘Six The Musical Live!’ is always on fleek and never close to becoming cheugy or cringe.

Also, although the songs don’t reinvent the musical wheel (do they have to?) they’re all distinct, nicely crafted and catchy as hell with writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss knowing exactly what the music needs to get the audience bouncing about. The performances are legitimately bussin’ and bursting with personality, and it’s all augmented by some costume design that’s totes lit.

Obviously, it doesn’t dive too deeply into the traumatic events these women had to endure (although it doesn’t completely ignore them either) but that’s because this one-act musical is about having a good time and busting a groove, and in that department it’s a blast. Indeed, as a musical based on historical events it’s one of the more enjoyable efforts and unlike the overblown and self-important ‘Hamilton’ it didn’t get on my bloody nerves.

I can understand why this musical has been so popular and that seeing it live (something I would now not be opposed to doing) must be undeniably fun, so by the time it ended I regarded the fact that Rick Wakeman hadn’t written the music as something of a fucking relief.