IT’S the tale of Henry VIII and his six wives, without so much as a sighting of the power-hungry, woman-hungry, and well, just hungry monarch.
And it is a tale that is all the better for his omission.
Six is the musical which has taken theatres by storm over the past few years and this week it is the Alhambra’s turn to showcase it until Saturday night.
And Tuesday’s opening night saw three Catherines, two Annes and a Jane arrive in Bradford with a bang.
A riotous hour and 20 minutes, choreographed as spectacularly as a Little Mix concert at Wembley, had the crowd in stitches, while also marvelling at the songs on offer, which ranged from power ballads to Eurotrance, and picking up on modern-day references to dating apps.
Yna Tresvalles may be small in stature, but she is a real force of nature as Anne Boleyn. (Image: Pamela Raith Photography)
I almost feel guilty writing this review as a man, as the core message of the Six story is these six women reclaiming their story from Henry VIII, six brilliant ladies in their own right, who deserve to be known 500 years later for being more than just divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
A rather poignant ending sees the sextet re-imagine the full lives they could have led were it not for the king, with poor Catherine Howard (Lizzie Emery) for example getting the chop at 18 for being a girl who, seemingly, just wanted to have fun.
There were little deft touches, including in the portrayal of Henry’s two foreign wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves. Glaswegian Billie Kerr played Catherine of Aragon, while you couldn’t have guessed Hannah Victoria’s Brummie roots due to the North London accent she adopted for her portrayal of Anne of Cleves.
Six has the ladies competing for who had it worst being married to the King, with bolshy Anne Boleyn (Yna Tresvalles) constantly popping up to remind Jane Seymour (stand-in Erin Summerhayes) in particular that having your head chopped off is a worse fate than dying early of natural causes as Henry’s one true love.
All six women sang outstandingly, whichever genre they turned their hand to, and with the quality of acting on show, it was hard to believe that Catherine Parr (Izzy Formby-Jackson), a prominent Tudor author by the way, was being played by neither the original actor nor the stand-in for the role.
There is no interval, but why would you want to interrupt 80 minutes of fabulousness anyway?
There is also a sing-along megamix at the end, and given I heard middle-aged men whistling along to Six tunes as we queued for the toilet after the show, I’d say it captivated everyone, adults and kids alike.
