Divorced... Beheaded... Not Live

I recently saw the movie version of Six the Musical. I've spoken about Six before on the blog, but no one who doesn't know me in real life could tell from the blog how obsessed I am with the musical. Sorry to those who do know me in real life who are wildly aware.

There being four of them makes sense in context. You won't learn what the context is here

Now, for a long time, I've wanted a Six movie not to exist. This might seem a little confusing, so let me clarify for those of you unfamiliar with the plot:

The six wives of Henry VIII have gathered together to form a band, but they cannot decide who should lead the band. Therefore, they all tell their stories and the one who had the worst life wins the competition. Also, all the queens are modelled after female singers

If that plot sounds familiar to you, it's because it's the same plot as Cats, albeit with a different ending:

Once a year, the Jellicle Cats meet together at the Jellicle Ball. They all introduce themselves, and then one of them is chosen to go to the Heaviside Layer.

The difference is the setting. Cats, as mentioned, is at the Jellicle Ball in an abandoned junkyard.

Cats Glossary

Jellicle Cats (n.) - Cats who are Jellicle
Jellicle Ball (n.) - Annual celebration where a group of cats kill one of their peers. This is somehow a good thing.
Heaviside Layer (n.) - Cat Heaven
Jellicle (adj.) - Nobody knows...

However, Six is canonically a concert-style live performance comparable with Taylor Swift's Eras Tour (having not seen this, I'm not comparing the content; only the format). To fit with this, the Queens all use handheld microphones instead of the cheek/forehead mics usually employed in theatre shows. Therefore, it doesn't really suit the conversion to movie form.

The solution to this is of course to film a live performance, again like Eras. This also has the advantage of including cheering and audience participation. However, unlike Eras, Six utilised the additional filming medium by having cameras onstage. 

But wouldn't that ruin the experience for the physical audience? No. They filmed it multiple times, both with and without an audience, to allow for taking advantage of both versions, similar to how they made the West End Trailer

Unfortunately I can't find any sources about the making of the movie so I don't know how many performances were filmed in total. This is also how they made the filmed version of Hamilton, although I don't know if there are any plans to put Six on streaming, but I would guess that there are probably plans to do so.

A while ago I mentioned that I didn't want a movie to be made, then I explained a detailed plan of how to do so. To clarify, this means that I admire that Six didn't take the more traditional route of making an entire traditional movie a la Wicked or Cats. If they ever make that kind of movie, they should make it animated and use some of the many talented artists online to collaborate on a project, such as viampire below (example only chosen as it's the first song in the show):

Embedding the video doesn't seem to work, possibly because of copyright, so here's the link

The only part of the movie that should not be animated is Haus of Holbein, which should be a combination of multiple animatics, bedroom karaoke singers, live action performances and probably literal muppets. Also, this clip should show over the credits on a loop:

Same problem again. Even if you didn't click the first one, click this one. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Samantha Pauly (Katherine Howard in this clip) refers to this as 'The Muppet Arms'

Here ends my pitch for Six: The Animated Movie.

We're over 500 words in; don't you think we should get started on something resembling a review? - Ed.

Sure, why not?

First of all, it's great to see that all the original Queens returned to reprise their roles. This did leave me with one question though:

Was it the original band?

For those of you who don't know, Six doesn't have an orchestra or a backing track; all the music is performed live by four onstage musicians, who are also women - The Ladies in Waiting. They play:

Maggie - Guitar

Bessie - Bass

Joan - Keyboard

Maria - Drums

The other instruments, such as the lute in "Get Down", are all samples from the keyboard, which goes through 150 different settings in the show.

I should also note that although these are the names the band are called during the show, the reason they have the title Ladies in Waiting is because they are named after the real Ladies in Waiting of the various Queens. The links I have put on each of their names goes to their respective Wikipedia page if you want to know more.

The movie gave the real names of the musicians, but 

a) I've forgotten them

b) I can't find any way of looking them up. There is maddeningly little information on the making of the movie online (as of witing this; there may be more by the time you read it). Even the IMDb page doesn't credit them

The movie is relatively short (for a theatre show or a movie) at only 75 minutes, so the movie also comes with a brief behind the scenes look at the history of the show and the making of the movie (and still not answering any of my questions!) including interviews with the original Queens, possibly to justify the ticket price.

To neatly segue into the actual show, there are some brief opening credits. The stage show opens with a brief burst of Greensleeves, followed by the Queens walking onto a dimly lit stage, but the movie starts a little time before that, with zoomed in shots of the Queens getting into costume (i.e. only focussing on their earrings/sleeves/crown etc.), while their respective actress' name is shown. 

There are some other uses of cinematography, but I think this is the only time part was added specifically for the movie. Later on I think they even removed a couple of seconds! More on that later

I will briefly address the elephant that is the title of this post in a second, but first I would like to tell you about a genuine conversation that I had this week in the charity shop where I volunteer:

Customer: (a query about a donation)

Me: I'm sorry but I'm not sure, so you'll have to ask a manager.

Customer: They're both busy by the statue of an elephant in the window.

Me: Oh, we don't talk about that.

(Dialogue condensed for clarity) If you are ever given an opportunity like that, always take it. It doesn't always land, but it's always worth a try. On this occasion, it did.

Back to this elephant! I called this post Divorced... Beheaded... Not Live because the stage show opens as follows:

Aragon: Divorced...

Boleyn: Beheaded...

Seymour: Died...

Cleves: Divorced...

Howard: Beheaded...

Parr: Survived...

Aragon: But tonight, [location of performance] we are...

All: LIVE!

As I mentioned earlier, to make the movie it was filmed at least twice, so at least one of them couldn't have been live. I initially thought that the performance was a one-off, as all the promotional material I saw said that the broadcast would be on April 6th, with no mention of other broadcasts. I was first tipped off to my error when I saw the movie on April 8th.

Because it wasn't broadcast live, I assumed that they would omit or change this line. However, because it was recorded live, they kept it in. The other part I assumed they would change is [location of performance]. For example, the original would have been "But tonight, Edinburgh, we are...". In the West End, the line becomes "But tonight, London, we are..."

For the movie version, I assumed they would change it, by either redubbing/refilming for each city, removing that completely (after all, it's just one word and the line would still scan without it) or changing it to something like 'cinemas around the world'. However, because it was from the live show, they used 'London'.

The other time they say the venue is at the start of "MegaSix" and they also used London then, but I expected that to be live due to its participative nature. Maybe they used London for both for consistency.

As I mentioned before, the show is framed like a concert, so it has very little opportunity to flex its muscles cinematographically, but it does on two occasions in entirely different ways. The first is during Anne Boleyn's introduction:

Animatic by LyraDraws - I don't know why this one stayed but I'm glad it did

During this section, the aspect ratio narrows (letterboxing) and the footage turns black and white before zooming in on Boleyn at the start of "Don't Lose Your Head"

The only other cinematographic choice which I can remember was just before Catherine Parr's song. In the stage show, just as she is about to sing her song, she asks for the spotlight to be turned off so she can discuss why the competition makes no sense ("Ooh, I'm Catherine Parr, and I draw the line in arbitrary places!")

In the movie, she asks for the spotlight to be turned off, but also for the cameras to be turned off. This is the few seconds I said were removed for the movie. When the footage resumes, it is from behind the audience.

There's one final change I don't think most people will have noticed, even some big fans.

Call yourself a big fan? Call again when you look like this

The song "Six" repeats the lyrics:

We're one of a kind, no category

Too many years, lost in his-story

We're free to take our crowning glory

For five more minutes

Of course, the cleverness of these lyrics is in the fact that the lines count from 1-5 (yes, I know that free ≠ three; it's not even a homophone like for, but I didn't write it. Take it up with Toby Marlow or Lucy Moss - pick your favourite)

The original version repeats this verse multiple times as written. However, when the Broadway production opened, they changed the words to count down, i.e. five more minutes; four more minutes etc.

West End and UK Tour versions still use the original (citation not found so could easily be wrong/outdated), but for the movie they imported the change.

Another, less fortunate change imported from Broadway was the omission of the line

Get your phones out; you're gonna wanna film this!

In America there are strict rules preventing recording of any part of a show so MegaSix cannot be filmed. Six The Movie is being broadcast in cinemas so rules are different anyway, plus it is being broadcast worldwide which complicates matters even further.

To clarify the rules re filming theatre productions:

1. Unless explicitly told otherwise, recording is completely prohibited

2. Some performances allow parts of the show to be filmed. These will be explicitly stated by the cast and/or theatre staff

3. In cinemas, recording is completely prohibited

Sorry, that went on a bit of a tangent.

In conclusion, Six: The Movie does the stage show proud and doesn't fall into the trap of trying to make more of itself. If you want to see the stage show but can't afford it, see the movie instead. It's more expensive that a normal cinema ticket, but also a lot less expensive than a theatre ticket.

I recommend seeing it in cinemas while you can, but if you prefer, it will probably be available on streaming/DVD soon.

Next: AI Q&A