Six: For Maybe One Week Only

Great art, in an elevator pitch, would probably get the creators laughed out of the room. A hilarious and inspiring musical based on a true story about September 11th? Come from Away. A futuristic steampunk adaptation of an ancient, famous Greek myth set to folk music? Hadestown. The six wives of King Henry VIII meeting up after their deaths to have a contest as a concert of pop songs? Well, that’s Six.

As of this writing, Six: The Musical Live! is only intended to be in theaters in the U.S. for one week starting August 14th, after the U.K. and Australia already got it on their big screens last year. However, as we saw with the recent proshot of Hadestown, which was originally only supposed to be in theaters for five days with limited showtimes, that could very easily change. And it should change. Six is contagiously energetic, as hilarious and deeply moving as it is inspiring, and so sharp, you’d better watch your neck.

This proshot surprised me by starting with a short documentary offering a speed run of the show’s history––sorry, herstory––so far. It’s very fun and engaging, with some surprises, like Natalie Paris (who plays Jane Seymour) reflecting on performing at the Tower of London and, at the end of her song, being able to see the window of the room where Jane Seymour gave birth. This documentary is effective in getting the audience invested in the show they’re about to see, especially as many of them may not have seen it live and don’t know what to expect.

The stars and the writers—Lucy Moss, who also directed this for the stage, and Toby Marlow—recount stories of performing everywhere from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to “an audience of six”… which at that same festival quickly became “the show you couldn’t get into”… to the Olivier Awards. The people I brought in my group to the theater certainly had no idea what they were in for other than, “It’s a proshot of a musical. If I say any more than that, it’s going to sound weird.”

As a musical, Six is a great mix of smart and fun. It never shies away from the tragedy of each of these women’s lives, but it also has fun with it, including some very dark comedy. If you have no idea about the history of the English monarchy, or if you just know that famous rhyme, which Six uses to great effect, they catch you up in the first musical number without feeling like a lecture. If you’re a history expert, they use a huge variety of plays-on-words, rhymes, references—even to other pop singers and musicals—and character-establishing moments in this incredibly fast-paced and upbeat number so you won’t feel like you’re waiting for everyone else to catch up.

For this proshot, the original West End cast—Jarnéia Richard-Noel as Catherine of Aragon, Millie O’Connell as Anne Boleyn, Natalie Paris as Jane Seymour, Alexia McIntosh as Anna of Cleves, Aimie Atkinson as Katherine Howard, and Maiya Quansah-Breed as Catherine Parr—is reunited. It’s wonderful that the production took the effort to bring them back for this proshot that will preserve their performances forever. Credit should be given to the cast, casting team, and the pair of Lucy Moss, who also directed it for the stage, and Toby Marlow as the writers for ensuring that. Although these are all pop vocals singing songs meant to sound like concert-ready pop hits, each queen sounds unique. Their actual voices are all unique, and each of their songs is unique.

Liz Clare directed Six for the screen and did an amazing job. It feels like watching a concert and a music video, without ever losing sight of the fact that there’s a story going on. Close-ups, fun angles, and various lighting effects—including during the wild “Haus of Holbein” number—keep the story dynamic and energetic. Moments with fast cuts don’t feel overwhelming or hard to follow, especially because they’re spaced out between more stable shots showcasing choreography or a performance. Close-ups show us wonderful costuming details, such as each queen’s earrings with Roman numerals indicating which “number” wife they were. Six’s costuming has been consistently praised, and rightfully so. Each queen has a unique color and unique costume, while also looking coherent with all the others as a group.

Several close-ups also display details of their subtle shifts in facial expressions and choreography that grow, such as during Anne Boleyn’s “Don’t Lose Ur Head” and Katherine Howard’s “All You Wanna Do.” Cuts to show various queens showcase moments you might miss if you were watching this on stage.

The cinematography makes a bold and interesting choice when one of the queens makes a bold and specific decision regarding her role in the concert. That audacity pays off, making this scene stand out and giving it the raw gravity it requires to make an impact. This moment hasn’t been in any of the marketing, and that was very smart, because it keeps it a surprise. So I will, too.

Six has a unique challenge that many other musicals with proshots don’t: because it’s staged as a concert, the audience is indispensable. How do you translate the energy of engaging a live audience to movie theaters? For the audience in the movie theater I was in, it translated pitch-perfectly—pun intended. Early calls to “Make some noise!” got some enthusiasm. Encouragement to clap to the beat was heartily embraced. Sometimes, we even laughed at a joke before the live audience did. Pretty soon, the movie theater audience was applauding after each song as if the actors could hear how much we were loving it. So, in case any of the actors, writers, or directors (stage or screen) end up reading this, you were getting enthusiastic applause from a movie theater across the pond.

Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow’s writing is stellar. Moss’s onstage direction provided an excellent foundation for Clare to bring to the screen. The music is consistently pop-concert-ready, very upbeat and thrilling, which lends some heartbreaking contrast as the tragedy of each story seeps—and then breaks in. The lyrics have so many amazing puns, plays-on-words, creative and some downright hilarious rhymes, and too many other fun, smart, and creative elements to list. Going with how each queen’s voice sounds unique, each queen’s solo song and other featured musical moments are unique. Woven through the concert setup is a powerful story with distinct characters. Whether you have a favorite or two or can’t choose between them all, you’ll definitely feel for them all.

Proshots seem to be becoming more common in theater. In recent years, we’ve had Hamilton, Come from Away, Heathers, Waitress, Frozen, Merrily We Roll Along, and more! The absolutely brilliant Suffs, fitting its themes of coming together to give everyone a voice, aired its proshot on PBS stations around the U.S. in 2026, and it streamed in full for free for months on YouTube and PBS’s website. The former site still has clips and a documentary about the real-life suffragists portrayed in the show, and the latter still has the full musical available for a subscription.

Seriously, find Suffs. From the choice to cast all women and non-binary actors, to the performances, to the way it manages to be hilarious, intelligent, thrilling, dark, and inspiring, to recurring musical motifs showing similarities, to the cinematography, to how endlessly engaging it is because, even though we know how it turned out, it’s not always taught how exactly we got there and just how close it was to going another way. On top of all of that, the show’s writer, Shaina Taub, also stars in it.

StarKid does proshots for every one of their shows, like The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals. Some streamed, some went to the big screen, and some canceled big-screen plans to stream instead and then ended up on the big screen anyway. Hadestown and Six both came to the big screen in 2026. Outside of Broadway and the West End, there’s Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Christmas Carol: The Remix, written by and starring Q Brothers. Every single one of these shows is extremely different from the others, showing just how vast the musical medium is. Whether you’ve heard of them or not, click the titles to see the trailers and see which ones grab you. One of the truly wonderful things about musicals is that they can be anything, if only you allow yourself to be open to it. This is true for any art.

Proshots like Six are a wonderful way to make theatergoing accessible. Ticket prices and travel are expensive, and travel also costs time, factors people may not be able to afford. Proshots are a way for more people to see the show. Some shows close before being able to find a loving audience. Proshots give those shows a chance to live on and find that audience. Some shows find their audience and close anyway. Proshots preserve those shows for the existing audience, allow that audience to share it with new audiences, and leave it open for future audiences to discover it. When they find out a show that got a proshot is playing live near them, they’re even more likely to go.

Of course, in any live performance, part of the appeal for the audience, cast, and crew is experiencing it live and together. The energy of the audience is slightly different for every performance, including Six, affecting the cast and crew in a symbiotic exchange. Things happen slightly differently in every performance, whether intentionally or not, affecting the cast and crew and, in turn, affecting the audience. Just like films are often meant to be seen on the big screen, plays and stage musicals are meant to be seen on stage, and experiencing either one with an audience in real time can add to the experience. That doesn’t mean proshots or home distributions that live on for years to come aren’t worthy or special in their own right.