Book, music & lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Theatre Royal. Till Dec 20, 2026.
Welcome to the third full tour of Six in six years (I’m not counting the Covid-interruptus one). The Edinburgh Fringe six-cess story has proven an easy crowd-filler thanks to its catchy pop score, positive message and (relatively) budget-friendly staging. Long live the Queens!
But it raises the question: who in Sydney HASN’T seen it already? And is it worth seeing again?
The bells and whistles have been slowly upgraded over time (more lights, more sequins, same banging tunes), but this time there’s an all-new cast of Queens, which makes for some scrumptious comparisons. It’s the best part of seeing a show multiple times: the chance to compare and contrast casts in essentially the same production.
Of course, ranking the leading ladies is antithetical to the show’s message. Six demands that we treat these women as individuals rather than a collective, yet the performers are simply the latest in a long line of actresses to take on these parts. We may not want to compare the six wives to each other, but we can easily compare each Boleyn, Howard and Parr, and as the opening night post-show bar chat proved, everyone has a favourite.
The trick to casting Six isn’t finding singers who can belt the tunes. Big belters are a dime a dozen these days. It’s casting an ensemble that blends in the group numbers and has good comic timing, because comedy is where Six stands out. On that score this cast is solid, with a few of these Queens are among the strongest I’ve seen (this is my fourth production and my third completely different cast, across two continents).
Sarah Murr, a performer who has never knowingly NOT had a twinkle in her eye, gives Catherine of Aragon a strong smirk and the sharpest timing of the cast. It’s great to see this accomplished vocalist handle some proper choreography, too. Murr is the glue holding the team together, knowing when to steal the spotlight and when to blend back and let others have their moment. Cara Bessey drops some of Jane Seymour’s earnestness in favour of bigger comedy, and it works. Mia Paris Scalise, in her professional stage debut, has the biggest shoes to fill as the most overtly comedic Queen, Anne Boleyn, and has the specificity and diction to land every line. The beheading jokes quickly lose their spark (a fault of the writing, not the performance), but she keeps the role fresh.
The other three Queens, Anna of Cleves (Kadesa Honeyhill), Katherine Howard (Angela Brischetto) and Catherine Parr (Lorinda May Merrypor), find the comedy a little harder to serve, despite their vocal strengths. Honeyhill gives Anna a gentler, cheekier take, and while it’s charming, it lacks some of the role’s signature comedic bite. Brischetto nails Katherine Howard’s complicated solo, though the quicker patter in the group numbers occasionally loses its sharpness meaning some jokes get missed. Merrypor has the unenviable task of playing Catherine Parr, arguably the most thankless of the Queens, a worthy and earnest character who is, let’s be honest, a bit of a fun-sponge. Her natural warmth and beautiful voice are what make the role work.
Long-running shows often pose a dilemma, and I spent some time thinking about it (mainly while ‘Haus of Holbein’ was going on). As each new casts keep iterating, we slip further from the core concepts of the original, where each performer was tightly aligned to a pop paradigm: Catherine of Aragon was a Beyoncé pastiche, Jane Seymour was Adele, Katherine Howard was Ariana Grande, Catherine Parr was Alicia Keys etc. Each subsequent casting gives us a slightly more distanced version of the characters, like the warped reality of Backrooms (sorry, I will stop using that film as a cultural reference soon, I swear) the characters remain familiar, but they’re certainly changing into something different than originally intended.
This happens to a lot of iconic, long-running shows. The Phantom of the Opera was originally a sexually alluring masked daddy, and now they cast any twink with the vocal chops. These days Little Shop of Horrors’ Seymour is just a hot leading man in glasses, and The Rocky Horror Show’s Dr Frank-N-Furter is any washed-up pop star in fishnets. The external features remain (the mask, the dorky glasses, the lingerie), but something at the heart of the role, the subtext of the character, is diluted.
And that’s starting to happen to Six but in a slightly different way. This Six is less “pop concert” and more “musical theatre”. These aren’t pop divas anymore, they’re characters, and that takes a bit of getting used to. But the more I thought about it, and got over my initial slightly negative reaction, the more I came to realise this is actually better in the long run. Now you don’t need to know and love your 2010s pop royalty to appreciate these Queens. The songs and the performances are enough in their own right – as proven by the show’s continued success around the world.
So, should you see Six again? If you’re already a member of the Six Queendom, of course. A recording can’t compete with seeing it live. If you’re a fan of big voices and some basic “down with the patriarchy” humour, it’s well worth the trip. For my money, seeing Murr, Bessey and Scalise alone is worth the cash.
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