Review: Six – Teen Edition

The first time I saw Six by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss on stage, I was completely enthralled and desperate to explore it within a school environment. You can easily imagine how excited I was when I discovered a school's edition had been released. If you're looking to perform this as a school production, you'll know that you are limited to a small cast of six females. Helpfully in this adaptation, there is scope to add back-up singers and dancers. It lends itself as a perfect script to explore as part of a musical theatre module.

For those not familiar with the play, this musical theatre production uses direct audience address to tell the story of the six wives of Henry VIII. The use of singing and comedy capture the audience's attention from the beginning. On reading the script I immediately loved the character descriptions, such as: ‘Catherine of Aragon – A real badass monarch. Commanding, sure of herself, bold. She lights up the room.’ I knew that this would be a script that would capture students’ imaginations immediately.

There are notes at the start of the play that give specific instructions around punctuation. This is really effective, as it allows teachers to discuss the use of language within a play with students and link directly to the playwright's intentions. The text allows you to put the band – or, as the script refers to them as, ‘Ladies in Waiting’ – at the heart of the production. Musicians are often the unsung heroes of a musical production, but you can play around with their staging to keep them at the centre of the action.

The script is well structured, with songs written in capitals to allow for easy differentiation between the songs and straight dialogue. The script itself has so many comical moments and truly makes history fun, engaging and relevant. While the script might be punchy, the book itself is a little disappointing. Apart from notes on the characters and punctuation there is little else. This might be because it is minimalist in terms of staging, but it would be helpful to get a few design directions. That said, there are plenty of clips of Six around the internet that will help you with a few ideas of how to stage this fabulous production.