SIX the musical Festival Theatre Edinburgh 15th September 2026 Review
Image Pamela Raith Photography
SIX the Musical is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh (Tue 15 to Sat 26 September), and if you are quick enough there still might be some tickets left. From humble beginnings at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017, SIX, with music, book and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, has simply become a cult-hit show in many countries across the world.
What makes this show so unique is how history and the stories of the six wives of King Henry VIII have been merged with contemporary pop-music culture in a way that no one has done before. Many since have tried, but somehow just never got that mixture right and captured audiences like this show has. Who now can ever forget - Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived?
Musically this show draws on influences by some of the biggest names in contemporary music, including Avril Lavigne, Adele, Britney Spiers and Beyoncé. Look a little bit closer though and the Spice Girls are there too, along with that feel at times of some girl groups from the early 1960s. This is a girl-power show, and this becomes more evident as the wives/Queens tell their individual stories in a bid to be crowned the Queen of Queens by the audience in this talent-show format. Slowly they regain their own identities and come to choices that they want to make, without any King, or man, telling them what to do, or think.
There is a lot of pop-music gloss to this show, but a big part of its success has to be in the songs themselves. Each one is specifically tailored in lyrics and style to a particular ex-wife, and if you take time to listen to the actual words, there is some real depth to them. It is therefore a pity that it seemed to take so long to get the sound balanced properly tonight.
The format of this show is a simple one, 80 minutes with no interval, and for this show that is probably the right choice, about the maximum time you can hold the attention span of many people in an audience, but this does of course deprive venues of that much needed income from drinks and sundries at the interval.
SIX is simply a fun show, trying to do nothing more than entertain, and clearly, judging from this audience's responses tonight, succeeding with every song and show number.
I have deliberately not listed individual cast members here as this show is clearly a collaborative production where it is the SIX wives of Henry VIII who will always be the stars and here every cast member was on stage because they deserved to be there.
Review by Tom King (c) 2026
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
What makes this show so unique is how history and the stories of the six wives of King Henry VIII have been merged with contemporary pop-music culture in a way that no one has done before. Many since have tried, but somehow just never got that mixture right and captured audiences like this show has. Who now can ever forget - Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived?
Musically this show draws on influences by some of the biggest names in contemporary music, including Avril Lavigne, Adele, Britney Spiers and Beyoncé. Look a little bit closer though and the Spice Girls are there too, along with that feel at times of some girl groups from the early 1960s. This is a girl-power show, and this becomes more evident as the wives/Queens tell their individual stories in a bid to be crowned the Queen of Queens by the audience in this talent-show format. Slowly they regain their own identities and come to choices that they want to make, without any King, or man, telling them what to do, or think.
There is a lot of pop-music gloss to this show, but a big part of its success has to be in the songs themselves. Each one is specifically tailored in lyrics and style to a particular ex-wife, and if you take time to listen to the actual words, there is some real depth to them. It is therefore a pity that it seemed to take so long to get the sound balanced properly tonight.
The format of this show is a simple one, 80 minutes with no interval, and for this show that is probably the right choice, about the maximum time you can hold the attention span of many people in an audience, but this does of course deprive venues of that much needed income from drinks and sundries at the interval.
SIX is simply a fun show, trying to do nothing more than entertain, and clearly, judging from this audience's responses tonight, succeeding with every song and show number.
I have deliberately not listed individual cast members here as this show is clearly a collaborative production where it is the SIX wives of Henry VIII who will always be the stars and here every cast member was on stage because they deserved to be there.
Review by Tom King (c) 2026
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com