‘Six’ tour brings wives of Henry VIII to Tampa’s Straz Center as pop music divas

The pop music world meets the six wives of Henry VIII in the Broadway and London hit musical “Six.”

The musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss uses a pop concert setting, with all the expected trappings, for the six wives to share aspects of their lives. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr acknowledge that they are better remembered for how they died than how they lived: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,” they sing in the opening number.

Arts Newsletter: Sign up to receive the latest news on the Sarasota area arts scene every Monday

Building for the future: Resilient Venice Theatre plans reopening after Hurricane Ian damage

Sarasota Performing Arts Center: Panel named to select architectural design firm for proposed new venue

Marlow and Moss originally created the show to be performed by fellow Cambridge University students at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it quickly sold out and generated some interest from commercial producers, who brought it to London and then to Broadway.

Moss and Jamie Armitage direct the touring production that will be presented Nov. 1-6 at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa. It is one of two national tours crossing the country.

The New York Times described the Broadway production as “a rollicking, reverberant blast from the past” that is also “gleefully anachronistic, mixing 16th century marital politics with 21st century selfies and shade.”

For ticket information: 800-955-1045; strazcenter.org

Follow Jay Handelman on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Contact him at jay.handelman@heraldtribune.com. And please support local journalism by subscribing to the Herald-Tribune.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Musical ‘Six’ brings wives of Henry VIII to Tampa as pop concert divas