SIX: The musical about Henry VIII’s wives that’s making history hip

Who’d have thought that a student show about Henry VIII’s wives would become a global megahit? The two friends who created Six certainly didn’t – and, as they tell Julia Llewellyn Smith, they’re still trying not to lose their heads 

It’s Tuesday night in London’s West End and on the tiny stage of the Arts Theatre six women dressed in slinky, studded costumes – like Tudor gowns cut off above the knee – are rocking out to an all-female band. ‘Divorced,’ sings one, introducing herself. Each continues in turn: ‘Beheaded.’ ‘Died.’ ‘Divorced.’ ‘Beheaded.’ ‘Survived.’ The audience whoops and applauds as they all belt out: ‘Everybody knows that we used to be six wives.’

Welcome to Six, the musical that’s taken the West End – and now the globe – by storm, with 700,000 tickets sold worldwide. The barnstorming show, where Henry VIII’s six wives are transformed into a Little Mix-style pop group indulging in a sing-off about who was most ill-treated by the Tudor monarch, was written by Cambridge University students Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow in just ten days while revising for their final exams. It went on to be nominated for five Olivier Awards last year and the cast recording has been streamed more than 100 million times, making it one of the most streamed musical soundtracks after Hamilton. The show’s most popular song, ‘Don’t Lose Ur Head’, sung by Anne Boleyn, has been watched on YouTube 20 million times.

Right now, Six is sold out in the West End until spring. The success of the show has even spawned a themed tour at the National Portrait Gallery, where paintings of the six wives hang in the Tudor Galleries.

The musical is also touring the UK and Australia, playing on three cruise ships and in various venues in Canada and the US. It previewed on Broadway this Thursday and talks are in progress about a film version. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ says Lucy, 26. ‘Broadway was always on my radar as the shiniest, most exciting place in the world but I never thought I’d work there, let alone at the start of my career.’

It’s quite a feat for the friends, just over two years since Six was spotted by West End producers when playing at a tiny Edinburgh Fringe venue. Now – as Toby, 25, puts it – they are ‘constantly gallivanting around the world’ supervising international openings of the show. ‘Sometimes life can be really glamorous,’ he admits. ‘It wasn’t what I expected after uni. I thought I was going to be working at the Apple store in Cambridge – they’d offered me a job.’

Other highlights include attending the Olivier Awards at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Evening Standard Theatre Awards where they were invited to share a table with US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who took time out of her jam-packed Fashion Week schedule to see Six when she was in London.

As well as meeting Wintour that night, Lucy recalls, cringing, ‘Olivia Colman came up to me and said congratulations. I said “Congratulations to you, too, you’re a very famous lady.” I sounded like such an idiot. But I ended the evening by making a date with the wine waiter, so it was all good.’

A few weeks after the awards they attended the West End premiere of the musical Dear Evan Hansen, where they were seated next to Andrew Lloyd Webber, a self-declared fan of their show (others include Geri Horner, Holly Willoughby and Dustin Hoffman). ‘He told us that to write a musical about Henry VIII’s wives was a no-no because everyone knows what happened so no one cares,’ Lucy laughs. ‘Only idiots like us, who were too stupid to realise that was a problem, would touch it.’

Clearly he was wrong. But why has Six struck such a chord with audiences – particularly teenage girls, whose raving about the show on social media played a huge part in its success? Partly it’s because of its format – The X Factor with a touch of Horrible Histories – combined with insanely catchy tunes and witty lyrics. Anna of Cleves (in the show she is called Anna not Anne) performs a Rihanna-style number about how Henry rejected her because ‘I didn’t look like my profile picture’.

‘It feels much more like going to a pop concert than a serious bit of theatre,’ says Lauren Brown, 20, one of the fans waiting in the foyer after the show to meet the cast. But, according to Lucy, it’s also because it tapped into a call brought on by the #MeToo movement for female empowerment – with Six’s message being that these women were brilliant individuals, not just wives.

‘We decided we wanted to do something with a majority of females. Until then, I’d been thinking, “Why is it that every show I see is about these stupid boy characters and the only women are the girlfriends?” The world was ready for something different. Toby and I thought, “We want loads of women who are funny and as entertaining as hell, who are telling me that I can be someone, that they’re not just shunting me to the side.”’

Sitting in the bar of the Arts Theatre, Lucy and Toby (she focuses on choreography and directing; he writes most of the tunes, but they both do ‘a bit of everything’) are clearly terrifyingly talented, but also couldn’t be more fun. Lucy grew up in Ealing, West London, the daughter of a fund-manager dad who died of multiple sclerosis when she was 14, and a tax-adviser mother. Lucy attended dance school for two years, supporting herself by working as a cage dancer, before studying history at Cambridge. She’s the more reflective of the pair, while Toby, a former child actor from Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, is the more flamboyant. He devised Six after the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society asked him to write something original for the Edinburgh Fringe, as it had no money to pay royalties for an established show.

‘We’d been wanting to do a show about a famous group of women – we were thinking of The Real Housewives of Shakespeare,’ he says. But his thoughts kept returning to the six wives – although he just couldn’t work out how to make a snappy show from their complicated histories. Then, during a poetry seminar for his English degree, the idea hit him. ‘I thought, “What if it’s a concert and they’re a girl band?” I kept thinking how they could sing about their lives with microphones and wear funky costumes and crowns. I knew I had to talk to Lucy as soon as possible.’

Lucy smiles. ‘My first thought was that this could be really naff,’ she says. ‘But I trusted Toby.’

The pair, who Toby describes as having a relationship ‘something like weird, married siblings’, quickly devised a structure where each queen sang a song in the style of a particular pop star – so Catherine of Aragon became Beyoncé, while Anne Boleyn has a zippy Lily Allen-style number and Katherine Howard does an Ariana Grande-esque pop tune.

Audiences love the show’s message, says Danielle Steers, who plays Catherine Parr: ‘You can’t compare yourself to others – instead you should celebrate the sisterhood.’ Collette Guitart, who is an understudy for all the queens, adds, ‘There are six powerful women on stage and we are saying, “Everyone has their moment to shine.”’

Fans love seeing women of different shapes, sizes and races on stage. ‘I remember going to the theatre when I was a kid and everyone was stick thin,’ says Courtney Bowman, who plays Anne Boleyn. ‘We are showing so many ways to be [a woman] and they’re all great.’

‘I think that’s really important – a lot of girls long to see someone who looks like them on stage,’ says Hana Stewart, who currently plays either Catherine Parr or Jane Seymour.

Hana also thinks that teenagers enjoy history being retold in a way that engages them, with plenty of twists to the familiar stories. For example, Anna of Cleves – whom Henry divorced after six months for being too ugly – actually ended up, as Lucy says, ‘living her best life, drinking mead, going out hunting and outliving all of them’ in a palace in Richmond.

‘School isn’t great at making history interesting,’ Hana says. ‘All I could remember about the six wives was the “Divorced, beheaded…” rhyme, so it was amazing to learn the stories of these women. Why didn’t we hear about them before? They are the reason Henry is famous.’

The show has even spawned its own cosplay scene (dressing up in costume), with passionate fans filling internet forums with tips on how to re-create the queens’ costumes, and the Arts Theatre has a special wall reserved for fan art. Hana says, ‘I’ve never felt so involved with an audience as I do during this show. By the end they’re all going crazy and you actually feel as though you are in Little Mix. It’s a shock when you remember you’re just you then go home and eat toast.’

Fans were equally enthusiastic when, last summer, Toby found himself playing Catherine Parr for two West End performances, after no other cast member was available to deputise. A refund was offered but no one accepted it. ‘I was nervous because people had paid to see a show and they were going to be seeing this weird version but it turned out to be really fun,’ Toby says. ‘I’d only do it again in an emergency.’

So what next? They’ve both been signed up by music company Warner Chappell to compose songs for pop stars such as Katy Perry (Lucy’s dream is to write for Rihanna, Toby’s for Sam Smith). They’re also working on a second musical, but Lucy says, ‘When we made Six the only stake was not to embarrass ourselves or our friends. Now they’re much higher. It’s really scary, so we’re trying to take our time. I genuinely have a feeling that this is when it all goes wrong. I’m still waiting for this to stop and I’ll have to go and look for a proper job.’

Even with work going well, the pair joke that the rest of their lives are shambolic. Both are single (the waiter Lucy briefly dated after the Evening Standard Theatre Awards ended up emigrating). ‘My mum says, “You’re too busy to find love.” I’d like to prove her wrong,’ Toby sighs.

On the ‘contact us’ section of their website, marlowandmoss.co.uk, potential partners can get in touch. ‘But there’s a box saying “I don’t want to date you, I have a serious enquiry” and when I looked the other day every email fell under that category – it was all people saying, “Can you get my niece tickets for Six on her birthday?”’ Lucy laughs. ‘Can you mention we’d love people to contact us?’ Toby asks. ‘We’re not fussy. Ideally, it would be someone not in the theatre industry but beggars can’t be choosers.’ ‘Single would be good,’ Lucy jokes. ‘And alive.’

They can cheer themselves up by reflecting on how Six has created jobs worldwide for female performers, who – as Lucy says – ‘would otherwise be playing bloody girlfriends’.

Toby adds: ‘These are women who have been in the business a long time and have always been playing supporting parts. Now that they’re finally able to be at the front, they’re, like, “I’m hilarious, I’m a star.”’

• Six is currently at London’s Arts Theatre; for details and tickets go to sixthemusical.com

• Styling: Sophie Dearden. Make-up: Nicky Weir using Marc Jacobs Beauty. Hair: Sven Bayerbach. Production: Sian Parry.