Level 1 - Absolute Beginner
A famous Broadway show is ending. The show is called SIX: The Musical. On August 28, 2026, the show announced its last performance.
SIX will close on January 3, 2027. The show is at the Lena Horne Theatre in New York. By that day, the show will have 2,178 performances.
SIX tells the story of the six wives of King Henry VIII. The show is like a pop concert. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss wrote the show.
SIX opened on October 3, 2021. It was the first new musical on Broadway after Covid-19. Many people love this fun and modern show.
- Broadway
- The famous theater district in New York City
- musical
- A show with singing, dancing, and acting
- performance
- A single show for an audience
- close
- To stop running or end a show
- wife
- A married woman
- king
- A male ruler of a country
- concert
- A live music event
- announce
- To tell people important news
Level 2 - Elementary
SIX: The Musical, one of Broadway's most popular shows, announced on August 28, 2026 that it will end its run. The final performance will take place on January 3, 2027 at the Lena Horne Theatre in New York City.
By the time it closes, SIX will have played 2,178 performances. The musical tells the stories of the six wives of King Henry VIII of England, but with a modern twist. Instead of a normal play, the show feels like a pop girl-group concert.
SIX was written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, and directed by Moss along with Jamie Armitage. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille created the choreography, or the dance moves, for the show.
The musical opened on Broadway on October 3, 2021. It was actually the very first new musical to open on Broadway after theaters shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic, which made it an important moment for the theater world.
- run
- The period of time a show continues playing
- final
- The last one; happening at the end
- twist
- A new or surprising way of doing something
- choreography
- The planned dance movements for a show
- director
- The person who guides how a show is performed
- pandemic
- A disease that spreads across a large area or the world
- shut down
- To close and stop operating
- modern
- Relating to the present time, not old-fashioned
Level 3 - Intermediate
Broadway's SIX: The Musical, the pop-concert retelling of the lives of King Henry VIII's six wives, announced on August 28, 2026 that it will conclude its run with a final performance on January 3, 2027 at the Lena Horne Theatre. When the curtain falls, the production will have amassed a total of 2,178 performances.
Written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, and co-directed by Moss and Jamie Armitage, SIX reimagines the wives of the English monarch not as historical footnotes but as a modern pop girl group, each queen taking the microphone to reclaim her own narrative through an original song. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille's choreography reinforces the concert format that has become the show's signature.
The musical's Broadway debut on October 3, 2021 carried particular significance: it was the first entirely new musical to open on Broadway following the industry-wide Covid-19 shutdown, effectively signaling the theater district's return after a period of prolonged closure and uncertainty.
In the years since, SIX has become the longest-running production at the Lena Horne Theatre and now ranks as the 40th longest-running show in Broadway history. Its 2022 awards run brought eight Tony Award nominations, with the production ultimately winning two, Best Original Score and Best Costume Design, cementing its place as both a commercial and critical success.
- conclude
- To bring something to an end
- amass
- To gradually gather or accumulate over time
- reimagine
- To present something in a new and different way
- monarch
- A king or queen who rules a country
- footnote
- A minor or secondary detail, often overlooked
- reclaim
- To take back control of something
- signature
- A distinctive feature that identifies something
- cement
- To firmly establish or secure a position
Level 4 - Advanced
SIX: The Musical, the genre-bending pop-concert reimagining of the six wives of King Henry VIII, announced on August 28, 2026 that it will conclude its Broadway run, with a final performance slated for January 3, 2027 at the Lena Horne Theatre. By the time it closes, the production will have logged a cumulative 2,178 performances, a run that has quietly outlasted the vast majority of its Broadway contemporaries.
Conceived by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss and co-directed by Moss alongside Jamie Armitage, SIX subverts the conventions of the historical costume drama by recasting Henry VIII's wives not as passive subjects of a monarch's whims but as pop vocalists competing, in effect, for the title of most aggrieved queen. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille's choreography sustains the concert conceit, forgoing traditional book-musical staging in favor of arena-style performance energy.
The show's arrival on Broadway on October 3, 2021 was freighted with symbolic weight beyond its own merits: it was the first wholly new musical to premiere on Broadway following the industry's pandemic-era shutdown, a milestone that positioned it as a bellwether for the theater district's broader recovery at a moment when the future of live performance remained genuinely uncertain.
In the years since, SIX has ascended to become the longest-running tenant of the Lena Horne Theatre and now occupies the 40th position among the longest-running productions in Broadway history. Its 2022 awards season yielded eight Tony Award nominations and two wins, for Best Original Score and Best Costume Design, a haul that, while modest relative to its nomination count, has done little to dim a run defined less by trophy tallies than by sustained audience appetite for its irreverent, feminist-inflected retelling of a well-worn chapter of English royal history.
- genre-bending
- Combining or defying traditional categories of art or entertainment
- subvert
- To undermine or challenge established norms or expectations
- convention
- An established and widely accepted practice or style
- aggrieved
- Feeling resentment due to unfair treatment
- conceit
- A central artistic idea or concept guiding a work
- freighted
- Loaded or filled with a particular quality or meaning
- bellwether
- Something that indicates or signals a future trend
- irreverent
- Showing a lack of respect for traditionally serious subjects
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