skygiants

A different friend won lottery tickets, so I got to see it after all, and I'm glad I got to. I enjoyed it more than I expected to -- and getting to experience all the interstitial text (as well as the staging) really helped me contextualize the songs (as opposed to just listening to the soundtrack, which is what I did on a friend's recommendation after tickets sold out). But yeah, also all the critiques named in this post are valid.

My friend said the best part of the play was that it made the latter 3 lesser-known wives more interesting to her -- but it didn't change how she thought/felt about the first 3 wives.

It could have been such a stronger play if instead of the ~fake competition~ it was just the 6 wives in the afterlife lamenting that they're only known for the rhyme and deciding to tell their own stories from their own perspective. They could have still bickered, but it would have felt much less like "doing the thing you claim to be critiquing." It also could have felt less ahistorical that way -- it was weird to us that Anne Boleyn doesn't even name her daughter, nevermind anyone naming the Mary/Elizabeth feud that would become so important historically.