I thought I was going to be working at the Apple store in Cambridge – they’d offered me a job.’ ‘Sometimes life can be really glamorous,’ he admits. Now – as Toby, 25, puts it – they are ‘constantly gallivanting around the world’ supervising international openings of the show. It’s quite a feat for the friends, just over two years since Six was spotted by West End producers when playing at a tiny Edinburgh Fringe venue. ‘Broadway was always on my radar as the shiniest, most exciting place in the world but I never thought I’d work there, let alone at the start of my career.’ The show is more like going to a pop concert than the theatre. It previewed on Broadway this Thursday and talks are in progress about a film version. The musical is also touring the UK and Australia, playing on three cruise ships and in various venues in Canada and the US. The success of the show has even spawned a themed tour at the National Portrait Gallery, where paintings of the six wives hang in the Tudor Galleries. Right now, Six is sold out in the West End until spring. The show’s most popular song, ‘Don’t Lose Ur Head’, sung by Anne Boleyn, has been watched on YouTube 20 million times. It went on to be nominated for five Olivier Awards last year and the cast recording has been streamed more than 100 million times, making it one of the most streamed musical soundtracks after Hamilton. The barnstorming show, where Henry VIII’s six wives are transformed into a Little Mix-style pop group indulging in a sing-off about who was most ill-treated by the Tudor monarch, was written by Cambridge University students Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow in just ten days while revising for their final exams. Welcome to Six, the musical that’s taken the West End – and now the globe – by storm, with 700,000 tickets sold worldwide. Each continues in turn: ‘Beheaded.’ ‘Died.’ ‘Divorced.’ ‘Beheaded.’ ‘Survived.’ The audience whoops and applauds as they all belt out: ‘Everybody knows that we used to be six wives.’ ‘Divorced,’ sings one, introducing herself. It’s Tuesday night in London’s West End and on the tiny stage of the Arts Theatre six women dressed in slinky, studded costumes – like Tudor gowns cut off above the knee – are rocking out to an all-female band.
Who’d have thought that a student show about Henry VIII’s wives would become a global megahit? The two friends who created Six the musical certainly didn’t – and, as they tell Julia Llewellyn Smith, they’re still trying not to lose their heads.
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