To form a chart-topping lady crew these days, you’ll be able to walk during the tedious ordeal of arising with a new hook and protecting months of auditions. Or you’ll be able to in finding folk who have already got one thing in familiar — a unifying them — however constitute a territory of takes on it.

Like, say, the six other halves of King Henry VIII. They have been all married to the similar guy, however each and every treated the status — and suffered the aftereffects—in distinct techniques. (A rhyme memorized through British schoolchildren sums up their fates: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”) After you simply have to deliver them again to pace, get dressed them in Tudor/field date fusion and ship them onstage thru a gasp of smoke, a halo of stadium lighting fixtures, and, as one music lyric places it, “beats so sick they’ll give you gout,” to rock the sector’s historic suppositions.

That is the tactic of Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, the Cambridge College graduates who wrote the musical “Six” (Moss additionally directs, with Jamie Armitage), now on the Pantages on its nationwide excursion. Like alternative contemporary productions that boldly got down to subvert our perspectives on historical past (“Hamilton,” “Bridgerton,” the unedited “1776”), “Six” may well be accused of presentism, the addiction of judging the hour on the subject of lately’s values, important to anachronisms that disappointed historians. It kind of feels not likely, although, that “Six” can be harm through this accusation — it could even whip it as a praise.

The musical, which gained the 2022 Tony Award for highest unedited rating, is unapologetically — deliberately, proudly, joyfully, every so often jeeringly — revisionist. The Tudor queens onstage glance not anything like their historic oil portraits (which might be reproduced in chronological sequence in this system, together with temporary biographical main points and the modern day pop divas that impressed each and every queen’s theatrical character), and even though they percentage their pace stories, they recount them like fashionable younger girls with Tinder accounts who hold in high esteem pop divas and feature binge-watched a couple of season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” They’re all proud, fierce, acerbic, athletic (they sing and dance to Carrie-Ann Ingrouille’s relentless choreography with out obvious exertion) and at moments terrifying.

Khaila Wilcoxon as Catherine of Aragon within the North American SIX Aragon Excursion.

(Joan Marcus)

The display — which is nearer to a pop live performance than a standard musical — is structured like a fact pageant, the divas provide an explanation for then their rousing opening crew quantity, “Ex Wives.” Every will carry out a solo (with backing from the others) and the target market will make a choice who must be the gang’s govern singer. The twist is the criterion: The winner would be the queen who suffered essentially the most in pace.

This showdown certain seems like a counterintuitive structure for a celebratory musical. However the pitch it establishes is significant to the display’s luck. Dreadful issues came about to those girls, and if we in reality cancelled to take into consideration that we’d most probably be too horrified to benefit from the song. Comedy is tragedy plus age, as Mark Twain is credited with pronouncing, however may just plenty age ever move to put together decapitation humorous? Received’t it at all times be “too soon”? For the reason that queens themselves are so obviously over what came about to them, and so unsentimental, they provide us permission to whip all of it calmly too. The means is dangerous, and there are moments the place the display fumbles the elegant stability it has established. However I used to be inspired general at how skillfully it dodged its landmines.

Every other factor that nervous me in regards to the pageant setup used to be how the display may just maintain or lead its personal performative verve. The all-female band, led through keyboardist Valerie Maze, is true onstage, and the power stage is prime. Khaila Wilcoxon began the struggle off with the sort of blistering, Beyoncé-inflected tackle Catherine of Aragon’s misfortunes, “No Way,” that I in reality felt a tiny sorry for Anne Boleyn — now not such a lot as a result of I knew she used to be committing to get beheaded as as a result of she needed to observe that quantity. Fortuitously, Typhoon Lever gave as just right as she were given with Anne’s solo, “Don’t Lose Ur Head,” and likewise threw a accumulation of shadow on the other halves who complained about lesser misfortunes.

3rd spouse Jane Seymour (Natalie Paris) introduced the room ill with an Adele-style ballad, “Heart of Stone,” professing her authentic love for Henry and suffering for the son she died ahead of she may just meet. I used to be simply starting to really feel unhappy when the story of German-born Anne of Cleves (Olivia Donalson) took the whole lot to a zany unutilized stage. Historical past tells us that Henry proposed to Anne in line with a portrait through the artist Holbein (who will get a German space song vibe within the bizarre however superb crew quantity “Haus of Holbein”) however didn’t like the best way she took a peek individual, so he divorced her, escape her with a beneficiant agreement and her personal palace. Donalson places essentially the most certain, Rihanna-style spin conceivable in this rebuff, irresistibly exulting in Anne’s wealth and self-rule and in the long run acknowledging that she had it so just right that she will’t in reality compete with the alternative other halves within the trauma-off.

Olivia Donalson as Anne of Cleves within the North American SIX Aragon Excursion.

(Joan Marcus)

Probably the most dimly recalled of the other halves, Katherine Howard (Courtney Mack), is obliged to observe this triumph, which she does with a captivating and provocative criticism a los angeles Ariana Grande, “All You Wanna Do,” in regards to the much less glamorous aftereffects of being sexually horny to males.

That leaves Catherine Parr (Gabriela Carrillo), remembered because the queen who survived, to wrap up the display and put a bow on it in her quantity, “I Don’t Need Your Love.” The message, most likely unavoidably, is a little muddled, however the display may be very conscious that it’s dancing round notable, contrary problems — it voices any objections you will have nearly ahead of you’ve considered them, later dances round a tiny extra. Catherine takes the alternative queens to job, belatedly and unpersuasively, for evaluating their shocks, and for permitting themselves to be outlined through them. However the queens argue again that they may be able to’t exchange historical past. They are able to’t walk again in age and provides themselves glad endings. Or can they? It’s their display, then all. Smiling slyly, they ask over the target market to present in to the untruth.

Perhaps some younger folk within the target market will develop up believing that the six other halves of Henry VIII have been (instead than the faded, nervous girls in headdresses I’ve at all times imagined) empowered folk in fishnets who may just in reality wail — however plethora of others might be impressed to be told extra about their lives and deaths. Does it topic if the revision precedes historical past? The reality most probably lies, unattainably, someplace in between. We may as smartly benefit from the song.