Six is a ten

I saw Six yesterday, just a few weeks into its opening Broadway run, and it’s the most fun I’ve had in a theater since I saw Hamilton five years ago.

It feels impossible to talk about Six without talking about Hamilton. They’re both global phenomenons that disrupted musical theater via unique historical retellings. They were big enough pop culture sensations to make it onto my radar, an accomplishment given that I’m a casual musical fan who attends roughly one Broadway show each year. And they’re both great, with fantastic cast recordings I will listen to whenever I need a shot of aural energy.

All that said, Six isn’t Hamilton. And that’s okay.

Hamilton told the story of America through the primary perspective of one man. Six eschews telling the story of Henry VIII to focus on the six ex-wives we only hear of because of him.

Hamilton is sprawling - a two hour deep dive that hits all the key events in Alexander Hamilton’s life. Six is focused, granting us maybe ten minutes with each of its six queens, and short enough to not need an intermission.

Hamilton approached diversity on Broadway through deliberately color-blind and color-switch casting. Six approaches diversity by highlighting the wide range of pop music styles, each represented by its own ex-wife and drawing overt inspiration from stars from Beyonce to Avril Lavigne to my favorite Alicia Keys.

Hamilton and Six are both incredible, fun, and game-changing musicals, but for completely different reasons.

When I saw Hamilton I had never seen or heard anything like it. It was novel, it was subversive, it brought a new swagger. It was a shock to the system, one that took me weeks to fully absorb and process. Literally - it took me a month to pull together 2,500 words about it.

When I saw Six, I felt at home. While I’d never heard any of these songs before … I’d heard them all before. The writers found a way to match each story to a powerful pop music archetype in an instantly recognizable way that I really enjoyed.

Ultimately, the underlying messages of female power and sisterhood threaded throughout in a way we’ve seen many times before. It was an uplifting, raucous 80 minutes that had the crowd amped throughout. It’s amazing, and in the Brexit-and-Trump era, maybe it’s the musical we need.

Go see it! 

P.S. - if you’re interested, I’d actually recommend not familiarizing yourself with the songs in advance. Seeing how they match each queen’s look and sound is worth keeping a surprise.