Review- Six: The Musical

Reviewed by Joy Parris-Now playing at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre through March 8, 2026, SIX: The Musical arrives in Los Angeles as both a theatrical crowd-pleaser and a smartly constructed pop intervention. Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage, the production takes the familiar “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived” refrain and transforms it into a stylish, contemporary meditation on voice, authorship, and historical memory.

Framed as a concert competition, SIX imagines the six wives of Henry VIII as pop stars, each stepping forward to argue that she endured the greatest suffering. The premise is playful, but the show’s strongest move is the way it ultimately outgrows that setup. What begins as a contest gradually becomes a critique of the contest itself, as the queens move beyond Henry’s shadow and reclaim their stories on their own terms. That shift gives SIX its emotional and thematic force.

The writing is sharp, irreverent, and efficient, blending caustic humor with genuine pathos. The score, with standout numbers like “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” borrows freely from contemporary pop idioms—echoes of Beyoncé, Adele, and Ariana Grande are easy to hear—but the result feels less like imitation than translation. Pop becomes the show’s dramaturgical engine: accessible, immediate, and culturally fluent.

At the Pantages, the production remains visually striking and rigorously paced. The staging is sleek, the choreography precise, and the momentum nearly nonstop. Backed by the onstage band, the “Ladies in Waiting,” the queens perform within a concert aesthetic that still feels tightly controlled as theater. The polish is part of the point: SIX understands spectacle, but it also knows how to use spectacle in the service of structure and meaning.

The 2026 North American Boleyn Tour cast—Emma Elizabeth Smith (Aragon), Nella Cole (Boleyn), Kelly Denice Taylor (Seymour), Hailey Alexis Lewis (Cleves), Alizé Cruz (Howard), and Tasia Jungbauer (Parr)—brings strong vocals, crisp characterization, and ensemble precision to the production, with alternates Reese Cameron, Anna Hertel, Carlina Parker, andAbigail Sparrow supporting the company.

The musical’s cultural footprint continues to expand: SIX: LIVE ON OPENING NIGHT debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard cast album chart and has surpassed one billion streams worldwide. At the Pantages, that popularity makes sense. SIX is more than a clever historical remix—it is an unapologetically modern musical that gives its queens the final word, and does so with intelligence, wit, and undeniable style.

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