The musical “Six” arrives on Broadway with a fanbase already in place, thanks to the show’s many travels before it hit New York — ranging from runs in Edinburgh and London to stops around the U.S. to a production on a cruise ship. On the new episode of Stagecraft, Variety’s theater podcast, the creators of “Six” — co-writer Toby Marlow, co-writer and co-director Lucy Moss, and co-director Jamie Armitage — take listeners behind the scenes on what’s been a wild ride for three creatives fresh out of university.
Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below:
For one thing, none of them have yet had a moment to catch their breath and find some perspective on it all. “We have no other experience to compare it to,” explained Marlow. “It’s not like any of us spent time after uni struggling to get a musical on. We just walked out of uni holding our degrees and then, oh, I guess we’re doing the show now. It’s just been rapidly growing since then, and because we’ve all been there from the beginning, there hasn’t really been a time of stepping way from it. … Broadway is kind of like the final step of the journey.”
The show imagines the wives of Henry VIII as a pop icons, and the show plays like a concert. That vibe extends all the way out to the audience, which at many performances is packed with fans who know all the words.
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“It’s incredible, because you know that [the show] has made some impact,” said Armitage. ‘It just gives you the kind of energy you need sometimes, when you’re feeling a bit tired or a bit overworked. And then suddenly you come in and you see these incredible audiences members who are just buzzed out of their mind to be there, and it’s the kind of the thrill that is infectious to us.”
After the success of “Six,” what comes next? They’re not sure yet, but they have a few ideas.
“We want to write more musicals. We also want to write pop songs as well,” Marlow said. “I feel like any stuff we do in the future, it’s going to be rooted in something that we care about. As opposed to a story we want to tell, it’s going to come from a conversation about something we care about and then writing a show to explore that or expose that.”
“We’re both quite didactic with what we want out of theater,” Moss said of herself and her writing partner. “If I come away from a show and there was no message or point, I’m like: ‘But why?’ Art is great, but I’m really like, ‘Tell me something that I need to change about myself, or don’t bother!’ ”
New episodes of “Stagecraft” are available every Tuesday. Download and subscribe to Stagecraft on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and anywhere that finer podcasts are dispensed. Find past episodes here and on Apple Podcasts.
