2 weeks Ago By Jed Gottlieb
Being a wife of England’s Henry VIII was generally horrible and often fatal. As the musical “Six” reminds us the totality of queens’ existence is typically reduced to the rhyme, “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” But Anna of Cleves is the exception.
“Cleves is really the life of the party,” Danielle Mendoza told the Herald. “She is the boss woman.” Mendoza’s entrance into “Six” had her playing Anne Boleyn (one of the beheaded wives) on a cruise line.
Her transition from Anne to Anna in the touring company of the Broadway blockbuster comes with confidence (as a performer and in her character). “Anne Boleyn is mischievous, kind of like a troublemaker,” Mendoza said. “She’s very competitive compared to Anna of Cleves, who kind of knows that she’s won.
Cleves had a good life. I really enjoy playing her because she has these big interactions with the crowd.” Cleves gets to celebrate with the audience because, after an annulment from Henry, she lived a quiet life in the country.
In her own castle. With a huge fortune to spend. And no husband to tell her how to spend it.
“Six,” which runs through Dec. 3 to 29 at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, turns the story of Henry VIII’s wives into a concert-meets-musical-meets-glittering spectacle. Performed as a sort of dystopian “American Idol”-style contest, “Six” uses a set of original contemporary pop songs to tell a nuanced, sharp, and cruel story about misogyny in the music industry, our culture’s continued refusal to understand how women shaped history, and the relentless crush of the patriarchy.
It’s funny. It’s dark. It is packed with songs that would be No.
1 hits if sung by Adele, Ariana, or Alicia. Some people hate it for combining all these things. Most of the people who have seen it, love it for the same reason.
“The music is how you reel people in,” Mendoza said. “Because it’s a historical show, it’s kind of the same thing as ‘Hamilton’ in that it is trying to make what happened in the past palatable to the audience. So it’s about coming in with an open mind and realizing we can have fun while learning about history.
” The unlikely pairing of perfect pop and dark history is precisely what makes “Six” such a hit — eight Tony nominations, two wins, and some 1,300 performances and counting on Broadway. “Correct, some of the things that happened weren’t very nice,” Mendoza said. “So it’s about offering (this history) to an audience in a way that they can enjoy.
” The audience can enjoy it. The queens cannot. Sorry, five of the queens cannot.
For Anna of Cleves, the world is all about, as she sings in “Get Down,” “Sittin’ here all alone/On a throne/In a palace that I happen to own/Bring me some pheasant/Keep it on the bone.” For tickets and details, visit boston.broadway.
com.
