Empowering ‘Six’ brings pop royalty and a little feminist revisionist history to The Bushnell

“Six” — the smart, sexy and self-empowering pop musical that turns English history on its head — rules The Bushnell this week.

The first national tour of the Broadway hit by British writers/composers/directors Toby Marlowe and Lucy Moss visits Hartford Jan. 17-22. “Six” takes the famous, and famously tormented, six wives of King Henry VIII and presents them as modern-day pop stars, expressing themselves through songs and dances that chronicle their royal painful marital woes while evoking girl-power styles associated with Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Sia, Adele and others.

One of the “Six” regal pop icons could be found on a Connecticut stage just over a year ago. When Florida native Jasmine Forsberg last performed in the state, in “A Grand Night for Singing” at the Goodspeed Opera House in the fall of 2021, she had just graduated from the Musical Theater program at Penn State University. Her schooling had been interrupted earlier because her career was already taking off — she was involved in two projects from composer Joe Iconis, creator of the viral sensation “Be More Chill.”

“A Grand Night for Singing” was a significant show for the Goodspeed, the first indoor mainstage musical at the opera house since COVID happened. Its director Rob Ruggiero says he wanted “a discovery,” a fresh talent to place amid the more seasoned musical theater veterans in the cast. Forsberg played the guitar in some scenes.

The “Six” creators, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, have their own Goodspeed connection. The pair worked on a post-“Six” project, “Why Am I So Single?,” at the Goodspeed’s Johnny Mercer Writers Grove retreat and also appeared on an episode of the theater’s video podcast “In the (Home) Office,” still viewable on YouTube.

There are some neat similarities between the Goodspeed’s “A Grand Night for Singing” and the tour of “Six.” Both are small-cast ensemble shows: “A Grand Night” had five performers and “Six” has (duh) six. The Goodspeed sought a multi-racial cast, which is also a key element of “Six.” Forsberg is Filipino-American.

As Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour in “Six,” Forsberg sings pop ballads in a style that has been compared to Adele. Britney Spears, Jennifer Hudson, and Nicki Minaj are all possible resemblances to other characters in the show. Pop references have evolved over time to accommodate styles that are associated with recent hits like Lizzo.

The women share their struggles, romantic and otherwise, with songs such as “The One You’ve Been Waiting For,” “Don’t Lose Ur Head” (sung by the Anne Boleyn character) and “Haus of Holbein.” Jane Seymour’s signature song is “Heart of Stone.”

“That’s what ‘Six’ is doing: giving women a voice,” Forsberg says. “These are all women of color. The energy we want to leave people with is empowerment.”

Forsberg hadn’t seen “Six” before auditioning for it and didn’t catch it until just before rehearsals for the tour began. This is something she considers a plus.

“It’s nice to be able to have my own fresh interpretation. Jane is often seen on the show as a matronly woman who makes mom jokes. But I prefer to make Jane more fun. Some historians believe Jane Seymour was the only one. [Henry] You are truly loved. We don’t know. My interpretation is that she wasn’t alive long enough for the relationship to go sour.”

“We were encouraged to find our own way into these Queens,” Forsberg says of the touring cast. She was prepared for this challenge. Goodspeed was a challenge that required her to deliver show tunes from different musicals, as though they were standalone scenes with their own story. She also says that she had to learn to circumstance a pop song at her Penn State classes, and that “a lot of musicals now are drawing from pop elements.”

“The writers do a phenomenal job of intertwining the history with the songs,” Forsberg continues. “One of the things we were asked to do before rehearsals started was to see a documentary about Henry’s wives and read a book pertaining to our queen. It’s interesting to see how all these characters were related — Katherine Howard and Anne Boleyn were first cousins.”

Forsberg will play Jane Seymour in a one-year contract. That year is coming to an end with a run of several weeks in San Francisco in March. “Going on tour has been a dream of mine for so long,” she says. There are two “Six” tours crisscrossing the country right now. Hartford’s getting the “Aragon” tour. The cast is the same throughout the tour: Jane Seymour is played by Forsberg, Khaila Wilcoxon plays Catherine of Aragon and Storm Lever plays Anne Boleyn. Anne of Cleves is played by Olivia Donalson. Katherine Howard is played by Didi Romero, while Catherine Parr is played in the role of Gabriela Carrillo.

When she’s off the road, Forsberg hopes to work on her songwriting and solo performances. She hopes to be able to work again with Joe Iconis. “The thing I love about Joe Iconis is that he is very loyal to his people. When he’s in town doing a 54 Below show, I always go support him. I appeared on his album, singing back-up.”

The Broadway run for “Six” started in 2021 and is still playing at the Lena Horne Theatre on 47th Street in New York City, but the show was around for years before it became it hit America. “Six” was written for the Cambridge University Musical Theatre Society to be staged at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland. It was so well received that it was staged in London’s West End later that same year, a run which expanded from Monday-only performances to full weeks, then moved to a years-long run (interrupted by COVID) at larger theaters. There have been several tours in the UK, Ireland and Australia, as well as Holland. Even though the show was not yet seen in New York, it has been shown in several U.S. regional theaters (including the A.R.T. Boston, prior to opening on Broadway.

Still, “Six” seems as eternally fresh as its reinvented royal spouses.

”Some people have no idea what they’re about to see,” Forsberg says. “It’s the Spice Girls meets Broadway. I hope the people of Hartford are ready to party.”

“Six” runs Jan. 17-22 at The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Ave., Hartford. Performances will be Tuesday through Thursday, 7:30 p.m. on Friday, and Saturday, at 2 & 8 p.m. on Saturday, and Sunday, at 1 & 6:30 p.m. for $51-$167. bushnell.org.

Christopher Arnott is the reporter [email protected].