When the queens of Six landed on Broadway in February, they already the fans – some 75,000 on Instagram alone. Most Broadway shows develop for years, through workshops, readings, out-of-town tryouts, and previews before opening on the Great White Way. Six claimed its crown a little differently, in a way that was utterly on-brand and completely millennial. The idea began the way so many good ideas do – while Toby Marlow was not paying attention in poetry class. Here’s the story of how Six took back the microphone and made her-story to land on Broadway.

1. Cambridge University.

Before he was the composer and co-writer of Six, Toby Marlow was a theatre student at Cambridge. In the fall of 2016, he was chosen to write an original musical that the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society would bring to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe the next summer. He started scrawling ideas during class (should it be “The Real Housewives of Shakespeare?” How about a backstory for the witches of Macbeth?). When he landed on the idea for a pop musical about the wives of King Henry the IIV, one thing was certain: he needed Lucy Moss.

Moss was another Cambridge student who actually spent two years in dance training before enrolling at the university. She’s a co-writer of the show as well as one of the directors. Recently, Moss broke the record to become the youngest female director to work on a Broadway musical at just 26 years old (can you say #WomensHistoryMonth?!).

2. Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2017

The show debuted at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe as one of over 3,000 shows. The original cast was almost entirely Cambridge students, with another Cambridge classmate, Jamie Armitage, co-directing. But Six sold out. It didn’t win any big awards, but the venue’s capacity was raised to accommodate the crowd and the Musical Theatre Review called the script “so quick-witted poor Henry would turn in his grave.”

3. The Cast Recording

After Edinburgh, Six took off. Some shows take years to develop – look at Jagged Little Pill, a hit show that took three years to open on Broadway – but Six had a different path. Marlow and Moss took the show back to Cambridge after their fringe festival success and attracted the attention of West End producers. After a showcase in London, Marlow and Moss recorded and released their original score.

Here’s where things get interesting. The Six album has been streamed more than 100 million times on Apple and Spotify as well as making its way onto popular streaming services like TikTok. Since the show was still in London with no plans of making its way across the pond, most of the US fan base discovered the show through that cast recording.

4. Edinburgh Round Two

After the success of the cast recording, the show returned to Edinburgh Fringe with a new all-female rock band and new executive producers where they played sold-out houses every night to hundreds of fans. Somehow, the scrappy show from two Cambridge students was poised to become a global pop sensation.

5. The West End

Six opened at the Arts Theatre in January 2019 and is still playing today, over a year later. The show earned five Lawrence Olivier Award nominations, including Best New Musical. In March 2019, it became the second highest-streamed musical theatre album behind Hamilton.

6. World domination

Commercial productions of Six have toured Britain, opened in Australia and New Zealand, toured the US, opened on cruise ships, and landed on Broadway. Their North American reign was small at first – nonprofit theatres in Chicago, Boston, Edmonton, and St. Paul. But they’re on Broadway now, with new costumes, new set pieces, and sold out crowds that know every word to every song. It’s actually one of the few original musicals opening on Broadway this season and the New York Times calls it “pure entertainment.”

From Tudor Queens to Pop Princesses, their US reign is far from over. With thousands of fans ready to Get Down with them every night, the histo-remix is just beginning. We can’t wait for Broadway to reopen so these Queens can finally open their show and claim their thrones!

Tickets for six can be found here.

Images taken: January 2020. NYC.

Theater History: SIX’s Journey to Broadway