The Cast Photo by Joan Marcus

After a COVID-related delay, the show won two Tony Awards in the 2021–2022 Broadway season, Best Original Score and Best Costume Design in a Musical. The costumes, designed by Gabriella Slade, are gorgeous contemporary pop star versions of Tudor Queen attire complete with midriffs, fishnets and sequins. The music, similarly, echoes familiar Renaissance motifs filtered through contemporary pop music. The story is essentially a sing-off among the six wives of Henry VIII, a competition to see which of his "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived" queens had it worst.

Between each queens' solo number the characters alternately bicker with each other and pump up the audience, but like any pop concert, the audience is really just waiting for the next song. The songs are witty and tuneful, with just the right amount of historical information and contemporary references and extrapolation. Beheaded Anne Boleyn's "Don't Lose Ur Head" piles on the innuendo and is delivered with appropriate clarity by Nella Cole. Unfortunately, the sound mix and diction in the frenetic German techno riff "Haus of Holbein" were off on opening night; the lyrics were unintelligible, killing much of the satire.

The cast members are universally strong, selling choreographer Ingrouille's contemporary dance moves with their fun and funky Tudor court touches, and finding all the pop flourishes in their harmonies and backing vocals. "Heart of Stone," Jane Seymour's ballad as the only wife Henry "truly loved," is a highlight and is beautifully sung with relative simplicity and strength by Kelly Denice Taylor.

The last two queens' songs, "All You Wanna Do," performed by Katherine Howard (Alizé Cruz) and "I Don't Need Your Love," performed by Catherine Parr (Tasia Jungbauer), are two of the biggest downers of the night, the first a story of sexual abuse and the second of lost love, but the cast ably brings the energy back up with the help of their rocking four-member all-female onstage band, dubbed the ladies in waiting. The production is ultimately thrilling and moving, a celebration of girl power and empowerment through reclaiming herstory. It flies by at a brisk, intermission-less hour and twenty minutes.

Six runs through June 28, 2026, at the Ordway Music Theater, 345 Washington St, Saint Paul, MN. For tickets and information, please visit ordway.org: or call 651.224.4222.