'Reigns supreme': Broadway hit musical SIX comes to Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The award-winning Broadway smash hit, SIX, is coming to the Kimmel Cultural Campus next week for a three-week run.

The show highlights the six wives of Henry the VIII. And while there's historical context, this 16th-century story is remixed in a way that critics say "reigns supreme."

The queens in the show say viewers will walk away from the experience feeling like they just left a Beyonce concert.

Their characters are primarily known for how their story ends. For the queens, it's a vicious cycle of divorce, beheading, death, and for some, survival.

In SIX, the audience can hear the queens' take on events in their own words, in their own voices, and with their own swagger.

"It's more concert than musical," says Gerianne Perez, who plays Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. "It's going to be unlike anything anybody has seen."

Aline Mayagoitia plays the fifth wife, Katherine Howard.

"This is like if the six wives came together and became the Spice Girls," Mayagoitia says. "It's very telenovela, honestly. We get into the psychology of how they would write their own pop song about their life and what that would sound like."

The actresses say this remix of 500 years worth of historical heartbreak is now no longer told by a male historian, and is no longer just about King Henry VIII. This is about the queens he crossed along the way, and it's done with style.

"It's loud, like a concert," Perez says. "The dancing is unlike anything you've seen in a musical. The costumes, Tony Award winning, are not to be believed. When you see them in person? Chef's kiss."

SIX opens at the Academy of Music on Tuesday, March 21.

It runs through April 9.