Six: The Musical
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Six: the Musical trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Six turns the wives of Henry VIII into a pop group and lets them tell the story themselves. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr each get a song to give their side, and what began as a student show is now a fixture in London, in New York and on tour. This quiz covers the whole show: the songs and the chart stars behind each queen, the two writers and how they built it, the casts in the West End, on Broadway and beyond, the costumes, the awards, and the Tudor history the lyrics play with. It is written for fans who know the cast album by heart, and for anyone planning a theatre trip or a quiz night round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more about the queens than the old rhyme ever told you.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pop star's 2011 Roseland concert film inspired the staging of Six and its Catherine of Aragon?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé's Live at Roseland was what the two writers watched on their first day of work, to learn how a pop gig could also tell a life story.
Q 02What forced every Broadway theatre to close on the very day Six was due to officially open in New York?
The COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic closed every Broadway venue on 12 March 2020, so Six did not officially open until 3 October 2021.
Q 03Which weapon did the executioner of Anne Boleyn use after Henry VIII spared her the usual axe?
A sword
A sword was the mercy Henry VIII allowed: he commuted her sentence from burning and sent across the Channel for an expert swordsman.
Q 04In Six, the queen judged to have suffered most under Henry VIII is promised which role in the group?
Lead singer
Lead singer is the prize, but the contest falls apart when Catherine Parr asks why the queens still define themselves by one man.
Q 05At which festival did Six have its first run in August 2017, performed by a cast of students?
Edinburgh Fringe
Edinburgh Fringe crowds were selling out the student run within days, yet Six left without a major award and still drew professional producers.
Q 06Which future monarch was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who sings Don't Lose Ur Head in Six?
Queen Elizabeth I
Queen Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, and only then was her executed mother honoured as a heroine of the English Reformation.
Q 07Which British chart-topper was a model for Jane Seymour and her ballad Heart of Stone in Six?
Adele
Adele shares the credit with Sia and Celine Dion, because every queen in Six is a blend of real chart stars rather than a copy of one.
Q 08Which Broadway hit did one writer of Six study for a dissertation while the other refused to hear it?
Hamilton
Hamilton was the obvious comparison for a pop history show, so one co-writer avoided every song from it to keep its sound out of Six.
Q 09Which Tudor tune, wrongly credited by legend to Henry VIII, recurs as a musical motif in Six?
Greensleeves
Greensleeves is built on an Italian style that reached England only after Henry VIII died, so he cannot have written it for Anne Boleyn.
Q 10Gabriella Slade, costume designer of Six, also dressed which reunited pop group for a 2019 tour?
Spice Girls
Spice Girls outfits for the Spice World tour came from the same designer, who went on to win a Tony Award for dressing the six queens.
Q 11At which university were the two writers of Six final-year students when they created the show?
Cambridge
Cambridge supplied the commission too: its student musical theatre society chose one of the pair to write a new show for a summer festival.
Q 12Henry VIII's fight to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon led to the creation of which religious body?
Church of England
Church of England clergy gave Henry VIII the annulment the Pope had refused, and Catherine of Aragon never saw him or their daughter again.
Q 13Catherine of Aragon was first married to which relative of Henry VIII, who died months after the wedding?
His brother
Q 21Anna of Cleves, who sings Get Down in Six, travelled to England from a duchy in which modern country?
Germany
Germany's city of Düsseldorf was her first home, yet she stayed on in England after the annulment and outlived Henry VIII and his other five queens.
Q 22Catherine of Aragon, the first queen to take a solo in Six, was born a princess of which country?
Spain
Spain kept using her after she was widowed: in 1507 she served as its ambassador to England, the first known woman to hold such a post in Europe.
Q 23Which modern invention do the queens of Six parody in the techno number set in a portrait painter's studio?
A dating app
A dating app is the joke: Henry VIII chooses his fourth bride from a line-up of portraits, then rejects her for not matching her profile picture.
His brother Arthur had been heir to the throne, and Henry VIII later used that first marriage as his grounds for seeking an annulment.
Q 14Which American pop star was a model for Katherine Howard and her solo All You Wanna Do in Six?
Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande and Britney Spears both feed into the character, whose upbeat number turns dark as the truth of her story comes out.
Q 15Which encore do the queens of Six perform after the title song, a number left off the 2018 studio album?
The Megasix
The Megasix is a mashup of the queens' earlier songs, and the Broadway cast album includes it because that one captures every number in the show.
Q 16What name is given to the four-piece backing band that plays on stage beside the queens in Six?
The Ladies in Waiting
The Ladies in Waiting are characters too: each player wears a costume and takes on a historical attendant's persona, as María, Bessie, Maggie or Joan.
Q 17How were Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, the two executed queens in Six, related to each other?
First cousins
First cousins through the Howard family, the two shared an uncle in the Duke of Norfolk, who found the younger one her place at court.
Q 18Which court painter's portrait of Anne of Cleves persuaded Henry VIII to marry a bride he had not met?
Hans Holbein
Hans Holbein travelled to her homeland to paint her, and Henry VIII complained on meeting her that she looked nothing like the result.
Q 19Which member of the creative team of Six went on stage as Catherine Parr for two West End shows in 2019?
Toby Marlow
Toby Marlow, who co-wrote the show, stepped in when one cast member was on holiday, two standbys were ill and the last cover was playing another queen.
Q 20In which American city did Six give its first North American performances in May 2019, before Broadway?
Chicago
Chicago hosted the run at its Shakespeare theatre, where Six broke box office records and found the six actors who later opened it on Broadway.
Q 24Which American R&B star was a model for Catherine Parr and her solo I Don't Need Your Love in Six?
Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys and Emeli Sandé shaped the sixth queen, whose number starts as a goodbye to a lover and turns into a list of what she achieved herself.
Q 25What does a typical 80-minute performance of Six run without, unlike most West End musicals?
An interval
An interval is missing on Broadway too, where the 80 minutes run straight through with no intermission, much like the pop gig the show imitates.
Q 26Which piece of stage kit does each queen in Six carry, with a holder built into her costume for it?
A handheld mic
A handheld mic replaces the head-worn kind most musicals use, a choice the writers made to echo a pop star's stage show, in-ear monitors and all.
Q 27At which landmark were both Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, two of the queens in Six, executed?
Tower of London
Tower of London executions of queens took place privately inside the walls, a privilege of rank that spared both a jeering public crowd.
Q 28Which event did Jane Seymour, the third queen in Six, outlive by less than two weeks in 1537?
Her son's birth
Her son's birth gave Henry VIII the male heir he had sought through three marriages, and that boy became King Edward VI at the age of nine.
Q 29Six won two Tony Awards in 2022, one for costume design and one in which other category?
Best Original Score
Best Original Score went to the show's two writers, one of whom became the first openly non-binary composer and lyricist to win a Tony.
Q 30Which venue hosted the Australian premiere of Six in January 2020, a site it returned to in 2021?
Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House hosted the first night, and Six played the same venue again from December 2021 before touring the rest of the country.