Empowering ‘Six’ brings pop royalty and a little feminist revisionist history to The Bushnell

“Six” — the smart, sexy and self-empowering pop musical that turns English history on its head — rules The Bushnell this week.

The first national tour of the Broadway hit by British writers/composers/directors Toby Marlowe and Lucy Moss visits Hartford Jan. 17-22. “Six” takes the famous, and famously tormented, six wives of King Henry VIII and presents them as modern-day pop stars, expressing themselves through songs and dances that chronicle their royal painful marital woes while evoking girl-power styles associated with Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Sia, Adele and others.

One of the “Six” regal pop icons could be found on a Connecticut stage just over a year ago. When Florida native Jasmine Forsberg last performed in the state, in “A Grand Night for Singing” at the Goodspeed Opera House in the fall of 2021, she had just graduated from the Musical Theater program at Penn State University. Her schooling had been interrupted earlier because her career was already taking off — she was involved in two projects from composer Joe Iconis, creator of the viral sensation “Be More Chill.”

“A Grand Night for Singing” was a significant show for the Goodspeed, the first indoor mainstage musical at the opera house since COVID happened. Its director Rob Ruggiero says he wanted “a discovery,” a fresh talent to place amid the more seasoned musical theater veterans in the cast. Forsberg even played guitar in a few scenes.

The “Six” creators, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, have their own Goodspeed connection. The pair worked on a post-“Six” project, “Why Am I So Single?,” at the Goodspeed’s Johnny Mercer Writers Grove retreat and also appeared on an episode of the theater’s video podcast “In the (Home) Office,” still viewable on YouTube.

There are some neat similarities between the Goodspeed’s “A Grand Night for Singing” and the tour of “Six.” Both are small-cast ensemble shows: “A Grand Night” had five performers and “Six” has (duh) six. The Goodspeed sought a multi-racial cast, which is also a key element of “Six.” Forsberg is Filipino-American.

As Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour in “Six,” Forsberg sings pop ballads in a style that has been compared to Adele. Other characters in the show may evoke anyone from Britney Spears to Jennifer Hudson to Nicki Minaj. The pop references have changed over time to allow for styles associated with more recent hitmakers such as Lizzo.

The women share their struggles, romantic and otherwise, with songs such as “The One You’ve Been Waiting For,” “Don’t Lose Ur Head” (sung by the Anne Boleyn character) and “Haus of Holbein.” Jane Seymour’s signature song is “Heart of Stone.”

“That’s what ‘Six’ is doing: giving women a voice,” Forsberg says. “These are all women of color. The energy we want to leave people with is empowerment.”

Forsberg hadn’t seen “Six” before auditioning for it and didn’t catch it until just before rehearsals for the tour began. She considers that a plus.

“It’s nice to be able to have my own fresh interpretation. Jane is seen in the show as matronly, making mom jokes, but I like to make her more of a goofball. Some historians say that Jane Seymour is the only one [Henry] truly loved. Who knows? My interpretation is that she wasn’t alive long enough for the relationship to go sour.”

“We were encouraged to find our own way into these Queens,” Forsberg says of the touring cast. She came well-prepared for that challenge. Her Goodspeed experience involved delivering show tunes from a variety of different musicals as if they were stand-alone scenes with their own little stories. She also says that she had to learn to circumstance a pop song at her Penn State classes, and that “a lot of musicals now are drawing from pop elements.”

“The writers do a phenomenal job of intertwining the history with the songs,” Forsberg continues. “One of the things we were asked to do before rehearsals started was to see a documentary about Henry’s wives and read a book pertaining to our queen. It’s interesting to see how all these characters were related — Katherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were first cousins.”

Forsberg is contracted to play Jane Seymour on tour for one year, and that year is nearly up, ending with a multi-week run in San Francisco in March. “Going on tour has been a dream of mine for so long,” she says. There are two “Six” tours crisscrossing the country right now. Hartford’s getting the “Aragon” tour. Its cast has remained the same for the entire tour: Forsberg plays Jane Seymour, Khaila Wilcoxon is Catherine of Aragon, Storm Lever is Anne Boleyn, Olivia Donalson is Anne of Cleves, Didi Romero plays Katherine Howard and Gabriela Carrillo plays Catherine Parr.

When she’s off the road, Forsberg hopes to work on her songwriting and solo performances. She also hopes to work with Joe Iconis again. “The thing I love about Joe Iconis is that he is very loyal to his people. When he’s in town doing a 54 Below show, I always go support him. I appeared on his album, singing back-up.”

The Broadway run for “Six” started in 2021 and is still playing at the Lena Horne Theatre on 47th Street in New York City, but the show was around for years before it became it hit America. “Six” was written for the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society to be staged at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland. It was so well received that it was staged in London’s West End later that same year, a run which expanded from Monday-only performances to full weeks, then moved to a years-long run (interrupted by COVID) at larger theaters. Meanwhile, there have been tours of the UK, Ireland, Australia and Holland. The show has even already been seen in the U.S. outside of New York, having played several regional theaters in 2019 (including the A.R.T. in Boston), prior to opening on Broadway.

Still, “Six” seems as eternally fresh as its reinvented royal spouses.

”Some people have no idea what they’re about to see,” Forsberg says. “It’s the Spice Girls meets Broadway. I hope the people of Hartford are ready to party.”

“Six” runs Jan. 17-22 at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. $51-$167. bushnell.org.

Reach reporter Christopher Arnott at carnott@courant.com.