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| Alvin Ing, Lee Beery, Johanna Albrecht, Gilbert Price, Gail Nelson, Hal Watters. |
Six talented young performers –Johanna Albrecht, Lee Beery, Alvin Ing,
Gail Nelson, Gilbert Prie, and Hal Watters—were trapped in this Off-Broadway
show. Obviously, it had no connection to the Covid-delayed, much anticipated
arrival on Broadway of the identically titled British musical about the wives
of Henry VIII. (The most noteworthy performer in the six-member cast was baritone Gilbert Price, who earned three Tony nominations.)
Six was an ill-fated revue in which various topical
subjects were sung about in a presentation that lasted not much more than an hour. As Edith Oliver expressed it, librettist, composer, and lyricist
Charles Strouse—creator of such hits as Bye Bye Birdie, Applause, and Annie—put too strong a reliance on “abstract thought” when dealing with subjects like “life, love, birth
and death.”
Clive Barnes found Strouse’s lyrics “simplistic, the tone pretentious,
and the music unoriginal.” He observed:
The lyrics make such commendable statements
as: “Life is to Live. Life is to die. Life is to sing. Life is to cry.” Right
on, baby—tell it as it is. There are some decently simplistic political
comments such as: “The white man kills the Indian. Hitler kills the Jew.” And a
few social meanderings such as: “Everyone's a suicide—it is just a question of
when.” Well, yes.
For those old enough to remember a certain TV critic of yore, Barnes’s
conclusion might be worth a gander:
Strangely, for me the most dramatic figure
of the evening was my colleague Stewart Klein—he works on one of those TV
channels — stolidly chewing gum in the front row. That man chews superbly. It
could almost be set to music.