Six: The Musical Live Review
Just as fun as the live show, Six: The Musical Live is history mixed with a bop.
The film captures the original West End stage production of Six: The Musical, which tells the story of King Henry VIII’s six wives - reimagined as 21st century pop stars. They form a girl group to tell their stories and compete for who had the worst experience with the king, complete with a bevvy of catchy songs and fierce performances.
Six: The Musical Live continues an ever more popular vein of live recordings of original casts of Broadway or West End shows. But to compare this to Hamilton or to Phantom of the Opera, or something like Prima Facie, would be a mistake, because the source material is so very different.
Sure, the usual trappings are there. The film is well produced, the vision and music crisp and clear. The performances are great, although there is always the same problem that plagues all of these live recordings - that being that a theatre performance, projected to the rafters, can often be too intense in the close up nature of cinema. Nevertheless, this feels just as competently done as any of those previously listed iterations.
The differences, then, come not from the film itself, but from the show itself. After all, Six: The Musical is no ordinary show. If you’ve seen the stage show before, you’ll know that this isn’t a tense dramatic reading or important musical work; it’s a mile a minute rock show, the stars of which just happen to be an old British king’s wives. The history takes on nearly a back seat to the soundtrack and rockstar persona’s of the six leads, and in many ways the closest filmic comparator of the year is K-Pop Demon Hunters - another film that has you singing along in your seat.
Six: The Musical keeps the tradition alive, and will have you wanting to belt out the tunes alongside your fellow cinema goers. Sure, there’s something lost compared with the stage show - the cinema can never truly replace the vibes of the theatre where people physically around you are belting out the tunes along with the actors on stage - but being a shorter musical, and being such fun, this feels like a much more energetic and exciting time in the cinema than watching something like the 3 hour Hamilton recording.
