Stage/Theatre

What: SIX
Where: Royal Alexandra Theatre, 260 King Str. W.
When: Now, until at least Feb. 11, 2024
Highlight: Julia Pulo’s giggly portrayal of Anne Boleyn
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: The show’s sextet of actors, mostly early- to mid-career Canadians, dazzle in Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s sparkly carnival of riffs and glamour.

IN A RARE TURN OF EVENTS, Toronto’s got its paws on a Broadway hit while it’s still hot.

SIX, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s high-octane pop musical about the six wives of King Henry VIII, had plenty of buzz before it was slated to open on Broadway in March 2020. This was thanks to an addictive 2018 studio recording and a smart social media presence, both of which got young people hyped in droves. The pandemic delayed the opening to October 2021 — and post-lockdown momentum propelled the show to a healthy, still-thriving New York run (plus a couple Tonys).

Now, just two years later, there’s a shiny new production at Mirvish’s Royal Alexandra Theatre. The show’s sextet of actors, mostly early- to mid-career Canadians, dazzle in Marlow and Moss’s sparkly carnival of riffs and glamour. The material may lack depth, but the talent pours like Niagara Falls.

Concert lighting (by Tim Deiling) cuts through a cloud of fog to set the stage for the queens’ dramatic appearance. In a riff on the list of murder-related words that punctuates Chicago’s Cell Block Tango (“Pop! Six! Squish! Uh uh! Cicero, Lipschitz!”), they introduce themselves with a British nursery rhyme detailing why they each split with Henry: “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.”

Getting beheaded is clearly worse than surviving, right? Well, no — in SIX it’s not so simple. The show is essentially a pop-concert debate about who had it worst. Each queen makes her case through catchy tunes littered with references to different pop divas; by the time they’ve introduced themselves, the 80-minute one-act is nearly over. Emma Bailey’s set of flashing lights compounds with this short runtime to ensure things go down oh so easy.

Again, the cast is excellent. These are extremely demanding roles — for the vast majority of the show, the whole ensemble is on stage — and, largely, the entire thing feels effortless (this is no doubt partly thanks to the production’s pre-Toronto run in Edmonton this summer).

I’d particularly like to shout out fresh theatre school graduates Julia Pulo and Elysia Cruz. Pulo’s down-to-earth portrayal of Anne Boleyn seems flustered by the fame thrust upon her by history; her authenticity — and constant nervous giggling — is a welcome contrast to the industrial score. Cruz, meanwhile, navigates her eight-minute song, All You Wanna Do, with startling maturity: the emotional range of that number is wide, but she embraces all its shifts.

It’s easy to admire SIX for getting to the good stuff. The show’s concert setting allows for easy access to the main thing many people want from musicals: great singing. At the same time, I’m not sure that it commits to this lack of narrative quite enough. A faint outline of a story — the competition, a plot twist and a couple moments of conflict — still hangs around. I find this distracting: since the show is mostly just a fun, mindless time, it’s jarring when plot suddenly appears.

And it’s unsettling how often SIX asserts its own existence: from the opening number (Welcome to the show, to the histo-remix) to the closing number (It’s the end of the show, of the histo-remix), SIX insists that it’s a show the audience is watching — but, thanks to the short runtime, there’s not much space left for the actual content of that alleged show.

But hey — if SIX does anything, it gets crowds going. My preview audience was live, enthusiastic and constantly interrupting the performers with cheers. That’s something theatre desperately needs more of.