Before Six became the huge musical hit that it is, you’d imagine a musical about Henry VIII’s wives would be quite a staid affair. Currently in Cardiff Bay, this musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss is as modern a piece as you can get: this is not Hilary Mantel’s Tudor Queens.

The musical is presented as a pop concert, complete with fourth wall breaking and addressing the audience. The six historical divas compete to see who had it worst from their shared husband, each competing via a solo – in differing pop styles – about who had it the hardest. Six recasts these Queens of Henry VIII in the mould of pop divas such as Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Adele and even classic Britney. 

Conceived and written by Moss and Marlow while at university, Six’s youthful verve was presented, here, to an audience overwhelmingly made up of young and/or LGBT+ people. The show injects queerness into history and rights a wrong that has seen these six queens relegated to mere wives of a man.

Clever and current, satirising online dating apps and calling out sexism, the lyrics are whip-smart. “Ignore the fear, and you’ll be fine / We’ll turn this vier into a nine / So just say ‘ja’ and don’t say ‘nein’,” sing the queens in Haus Of Holbein, a personal favourite. The cheeky double entendres at the first half of All You Wanna Do make way for themes of men using their power to sexually harass. 

As for the queens, they’re all hilarious and/or heartbreaking. Chlöe Hart kicks the show off in some style, and some voice, with the others keeping up with her – Jaina Brock-Patel sells sauciness and then anger in All You Wanna Do; Casey Al-Shaqsy’s Heart Of Stone would be a beautiful pop ballad outside of this show’s context. Jennifer Caldwell and Aiesha Naomi Pease are hilarious, and Alana M Robinson is a soulful feminist diva. 

I can’t tell if they’ve added new bits to the show – the whole world stopped for two years since I first saw Six before this particular Cardiff show – but the musical certainly remains hilarious in places. As Marlow and Moss write in the programme, it acknowledges “the silliness and campness” and is “never earnest or too sincere”. All these years after primary school and I’m still learning about these women (did you know Katherine Parr was the first woman in England to publish books under her own name?), in the most unlikely of places… and all with a sick beat.

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Tue 3 May

Six runs until Sat 14 May. Tickets: £19.50-£54. Info: here

words CHRIS WILLIAMS