SIX
Book by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss
Music and Lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss
Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
More and more as we get deeper into the new millennium, the determination of what may or may not be a “real” musical becomes more controversial and more debatable. Probably the only factor you can take out of contention is subject matter. As Stephen Sondheim once famously said, “You never can tell what will sing to you.” With you, of course, meaning the author(s).
But there’s always the challenge of audience perception. Even when most people get it, some people don’t. Shockingly to me, for example, I know of an authority on the subject who thought Fun Home “isn’t a real musical” but earned its keep “because it’s something the gay community needs to see right now.” If we put aside the tone-deafness of the observation, I think, basically, that person simply wasn’t able to see the active story in a family drama about internal rites of passage and self-identity that takes place mostly in the usually banal setting of a family home: living room, bedroom, etc. And while that kind of existential crisis is indeed usually “soft” subject matter for a musical, Fun Home managed to conquer that by creating an inevitable collision of several trajectories in such a way that it amounted to suspenseful plot. This misguided observer couldn’t separate the musical’s own self-identity with its delivery system.
But the shock of that example makes me think more concretely about what “delivery system” means. It’s a kissin’ cousin to the old (and utterly true) bromide that “treatment is everything”; but since even the validity of treatment can be in the eye of the beholder, “delivery system” may be a somewhat cleaner way to make the distinction between a musical and an experience with musical material.
I would put Six in the latter category. Ostensibly it’s about the gathering of King Henry VII’s six wives—which is of course impossible, so it’s tacitly a magical gathering in a magical-theatrical setting. Which is that of a rock concert. And the queens are repurposed as rock stars, literal connections to their original Britishness, ethnicity and appearance thrown to the wind. If there’s any link between characterization and history, it’s that each rock star type is meant to represent some core aspect of her respective royal. And the script and score (Toby Marlow and co-director Lucy Moss) use rock music tropes they deem appropriate to each rock queen trope to inform the thoroughgoing similes.
They sing a bit together, and then they take turns each singing about their temporary time on the throne, often with the others providing some vocal and choreographic backup. One after the other after the other…
And then at the end, no surprise whatever, because what is a rock concert about if not communal catharsis, they decide they’re not victims anymore and band together to sing about their empowerment.
And empowerment where? They’re dead. Implicitly as figures in history? Are they now empowered in the sense of how they’ll be remembered; what retroactive blows they may have struck for female liberation?
Schematic, ambiguous and therefore, if you view it in dramatic terms, dull…because it never really delivers a story.
But if you’re of the disposition to give yourself over to a rock concert, which is pretty much exactly what Six promises…well, that’s what you get. With six excellent performers and all the rock concert visual glitz, sets-lighting-costumes-sound-engineering, that you could hope for. And to the best of my ability to determine—reading the house and subsequently hearing friends and colleagues say, “I enjoyed it”—audiences seem to find it very satisfying on that level.
But I don’t think many walk out of it haunted or moved by the characters or their trajectories. Nor resonating with the theme of empowerment. Attagirls, maybe.
And maybe that’s plenty good enough. Under the circumstances