Musicals should have chandeliers that come crashing down from the ceiling. They should have dashing farmhands singing about corn, vast kicking chorus lines, swooning romance, and they should be three hours long. What they should not be is 55 minutes in a damp-riddled underground car park in Edinburgh with a budget that would barely cover the weekly shop.
But every time the Edinburgh Fringe rolls around, it brings with it a brave new cohort of composers, lyricists and despairing producers hoping to ‘do a Six’, and match the success of the plucky little pop musical about Henry VIII’s wives which developed such a word of mouth following in Edinburgh in 2017 that it has now dominated the world, with smash hit runs on the West End and Broadway as well as tours in North America, Australia and the UK, and a production in Holland.
