REVIEW: ‘SIX: The Musical Live!’ Is A Monument To Musical Greatness

In 2017, Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow wrote SIX: The Musical. A year later, it premiered in London’s West End. They could not have predicted the amount of success they would have as a result of their short 80-minute foray into world musical theater, but eight years later, SIX is still widely regarded as one of the best musicals in the world.

After a few years of sold-out shows and multiple castings at theaters around the world, including Broadway, the OG Queens from the first cast at London’s West End returned to film the pro-shot, SIX: The Musical Live! at the Vaudeville Theatre in summer 2022. The result is concrete proof that not every musical needs to become a movie. In fact, SIX: The Musical Live! is hilarious, historical, and absolutely perfect.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, SIX: The Musical is a pop concert featuring the six wives of King Henry VIII. It’s as though Moss and Marlow asked the question, “What if the six wives of Henry VIII formed a pop girl group, not unlike The Spice Girls, and each one of them got to lead a song about why they were the most burdened to have been married to the man?” The answer is that you get a banger of a pop concert that is simultaneously a history lesson, a character study, a comedy, and most importantly a feminist reclamation of historical rhetoric.

SIX: The Musical Live! keeps proving how valuable pro-shots are for theater lovers.

Increasingly, pro-shots are becoming more common practice, especially for shows playing in London’s West End, as demand grows for more people to be able to view live theater productions. With the cost of tickets to live productions continuing to skyrocket, cinemas have become a last refuge for live theater fans to see something without paying hundreds of dollars.

SIX: The Musical is perfectly positioned to take advantage of that because of its intimate nature. While most musicals rely on elaborate sets and insane amounts of creative blocking to divert attention elsewhere on the stage, SIX: The Musical has only six cast members and an on-stage band called The Ladies In Waiting.

The show is formatted as a concert, and so the leading ladies do a great job giving the impression that audiences have simply bought a ticket to a concert. They even go out of their way to introduce each member of The Ladies In Waiting as a frontman might do to recognize all the members of a band.

That’s not to say that the stage was simplistic. Somehow, with only one small stage being shared by 6 singers and a band, the lights and effects clearly created what can only be described as an epic experience for anyone lucky enough to have been there. Every stylistic choice seems to have been made with every bit of intentionality, and nothing was out of place.

The cast and band even performed for an empty room twice during filming to give the cameras more opportunities to capture close-ups and other intimate details that an audience would have prevented. The professional quality of this pro-shot is evident in every way while watching SIX: The Musical Live!

One moment stands out as something that could only be done on camera and really adds to the overall humor of the moment. Catherine Parr (Maiya Quansah-Breed) is feeling self-conscious about the need to sing her song and calls a time-out to talk to the other queens. She effectively tells the camera to take a walk, and the camera shuts off. Then, as if the cinema audience were being allowed to see it from the perspective of the live audience, the scene re-emerges as a low-quality phone recording.

The real treat is the cast and their performances.

Once Catherine Parr decides to proceed with her story, the film is allowed to continue on the professional-grade camera. It’s a beautifully effective technique that temporarily changes the relationship between performer and viewer. For just a moment, the audience wasn’t sitting at a cinema; we were part of the audience. It’s like we’ve been let in on a little secret we’re not supposed to know.

When the show cuts back to the more polished version using the professional camera, it’s a subtle but powerful reminder that the audience has been watching a carefully constructed piece of theater all along. It’s an incredibly clever decision by pro-shot director Liz Clare.

The real treat is the cast and their performances. For 80 minutes, these ladies didn’t just play the roles assigned to them. They became the wives of Henry VIII. Not a single actress was anything less than perfect in the role assigned to them from first to last.

Jarneia Richard-Noel as Catherine of Aragon is regal and polished. While all six women were married to Henry VIII at some point, Catherine of Aragon was his wife for 24 years. When Catherine sings, she sings as someone who has spent entirely too long feeling like the other woman and not willing to let go of everything she’s fought for.

Every queen is a sensation in SIX: The Musical Live!

Millie O’Connell as Anne Boleyn is a wonderfully unhinged performance. Her song is an earworm that blends humor with the historical context of why Anne Boleyn is remembered in history as the infamous other woman who stole a king from his queen but couldn’t save herself. Millie O’Connell also acts the part with an incredible amount of dry wit. Anne Boleyn just can’t help but one-up the other queens to remind them that she lost her head.

Certainly not to take anything away from the other performers, but far and away, Natalie Paris as Jane Seymour is the true standout performance in SIX: The Musical Live! While she doesn’t come across as particularly sympathetic to the other queens, the audience sees a queen who loved and was loved by Henry VIII. Natalie Paris sings a beautiful, albeit haunting and tragic, ballad about her love for the man who only loved her back because she bore him a son. Natalie Paris plays her as maternal, loving, and deeply protective.

Alexia McIntosh is so creative in her role as Anna of Cleves. She brings energy and attitude to the role and reminds everyone exactly how unserious the whole show is. Using modern vernacular to describe her situation, Anna of Cleves recounts being divorced by Henry VIII for not “looking like her profile picture.” The story is that he sent for her from Germany because of a painted portrait he had seen of her.

Aimie Atkinson as Katherine Howard is fantastic, yet also the weakest link. That’s not her fault. She portrays the least-known of Henry VIII’s wives and, depending on the authenticity of the historical claims, may also be the least sympathetic. Still, Aimi Atkinson plays the part incredibly well and sings a wonderfully upbeat song recounting her time as the king’s wife.

Maiya Quansah-Breed as Catherine Parr is the last of the OG Queens in SIX: The Musical Live! and acts sort of as the glue that brings these leading ladies together. Catherine Parr was Henry VIII’s wife at the time of his death. Catherine Parr gets to tell of how she came to be his wife and the life she had to abandon because no one turns down the king when he proposes marriage. Maiya Quansah-Breed does an amazing job broadcasting the truly tragic circumstances of their marriage.

From a musical standpoint, there is no criticism worth giving. Each of the OG Queens has an incredible voice and can sing individually and fully carry the song on their shoulder. The more difficult feat as a singer is when a strong vocalist is suddenly required to sing in the background. Each character acts as a backup singer during their co-stars’ segments. Not once in the entire musical do any of them struggle to blend with their co-stars or seem too strong to play second fiddle.

In fact, each singer is so phenomenal that they truly become background voices without any real individual personality as a vocalist until such a time arises that they need that. When they sing alone, and especially Natalie Paris and Maiya Quansah-Breed during their ballads, they are able to seamlessly switch between intimate quiet moments in their head-voice and belting out insane notes using a well-trained mix-voice. All six singers are individually realized performers who also become a powerful ensemble. No one disappears, and no one dominates.

SIX: The Musical knows what kind of show it wants to be, and it delivers.

At the end of SIX: The Musical Live!, the queens take the opportunity to rewrite their story—to get the happy ending none of them received in real life. It’s an incredibly powerful and moving notion to see 6 women, remembered in history for their infamous husbands, reclaim their narrative, even if only in fiction.

Also, it’s a powerful visual to spend 80 minutes watching a piece of musical genius being performed and produced by an all-female cast, band, and director. The show dares viewers to be bold enough to say, “I don’t need a man to be involved to have a great freaking time.” It’s something that seems so simple, yet Hollywood and live theater alike, even in 2026, are still very male-dominated industries; SIX: The Musical Live! doesn’t care.

SIX: The Musical Live! does something unprecedented by allowing viewers to forget they’re not in the room but rather watching on a screen. It ends up feeling like an invitation to come and see the show in person, as it was originally intended.

More importantly, SIX: The Musical knows what kind of show it wants to be, and it delivers. The music is phenomenal, the queens give flawless performances, and there is virtually nothing to criticize. It’s a concert, a history lesson, and the reclamation of six women’s stories all bundled into one of, if not the most impressive, pieces of musical theater ever filmed for the silver screen.

SIX: The Musical Live! is playing now in theaters everywhere.