“Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.” The consorts of Henry VIII reclaim their history in this cheeky girl-power pop concert about the downside of queendom, the first new musical since the Broadway shutdown.
Simultaneously clever and jejune, it’s the brainchild of writing team Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, and was first hatched in college as a 2017 project of Cambridge’s Musical Theatre Society for submission to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Very much-lite in its appropriation of an anachronistic pop vernacular and contemporary attitudes to re-examine history, this is also a spawn of the Time’s Up era in its mandatory reframing of a female-centric narrative separated from the male gaze.
The musical is more persuasive when it’s in winking, insouciant mode, as is the case with the delicious Anne Boleyn, played by diminutive comic firecracker Andrea Macasaet as a gleefully chirping, selfie-snapping mean girl who just wants to have fun. “Sorry, not sorry,” sings the sassy homewrecker, with a nod to Demi Lovato in “Don’t Lose Ur Head.”
What distinguishes the signature numbers primarily is the sparky personality imprinted on each wife by the hardworking, appealing performers, all of whom dance and sing like Energizer bunnies with attitude. Well, all except demure Jane, who belts up an emotional storm, but as Anne takes cruel pleasure pointing out, “can’t dance.” Neither Mueller nor choreographer Carrie-Anne Ingrouille do much to disprove that, keeping her tucked away in back for many of the group formations.
Each wife gets to state her case in chronological order, so following Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour, who sanctimoniously reminds the others she was “the only one he truly loved,” comes the German import, Anna of Cleves . Next up comes Katherine Howard, whose encounter with the ax makes way, finally, for “the one who survived,” Catherine Parr . Her song, “I Don’t Need Your Love,” shifts the tone of the show back into reflective mode as the twice-widowed noblewoman recalls being forced to deny her true soul mate once Henry’s wandering eye had settled on her.
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