Rachael Dickzen

All My Six Posts!
Over-Analyzing All the Historical References in Six- “Ex Wives,” “No Way,” “Don’t Lose Your Head” “Heart of Stone” “Haus of Holbein” “Get Down”
The Tudor Crown Inspiration in Six’s Logo; The Tudor Fashion Elements of the Costumes in Six (with Painting References)
Six the Musical Wives 1-3: Historical and Modern Costume Inspirations; Six the Musical Wives 4-6: Historical and Modern Costume Inspirations
The Ladies in Waiting of Six: Historical Inspirations and Costumes; Details from Six Costumer Gabriella Slade’s Instagram Takeover
The Early Costumes of Six the Musical: From Edinburgh to Cambridge to London
Updated Six the Musical Costumes for Broadway!; The Shoes of Six the Musical
The Alternate Costumes of Six the Musical; How the Six Alternates Change Their Styling for Each Queen
Virtual Dance Workshops and Q&As with Different Six Cast Members!

I haven’t written about Six the Musical in a while now, huh? I should really finish out that historical references in the Six songs series at some point, lol. As part of my general need to cover everything to do with this Tudor inspired musical, I wanted to share a few quick screenshots from the Six Queens’ appearance in Ratatouille the TikTok Musical!

In case you haven’t heard about it, Ratatouille the TikTok Musical is a tribute to the 2007 Disney/Pixar film created by various users of the social media platform TikTok, with individual people all over the world contributing songs, choreography, costume and makeup design, set concepts, and other elements. Although Disney is notoriously quite protective of their intellectual property, they somehow got on board with this and allowed it to happen, even posting a submission of their own featuring a Disney Channel star on the DisneyParks TikTok. In a statement, Disney said, “We love when our fans engage with our stories and we look forward to seeing these super fans experience the [Ratatouille] attraction when it opens at Walt Disney World next year.”

A virtual benefit performance of the show was staged on New Year’s Day, with Titus Burgess starring as Remy the Rat. Six co-writer Lucy Moss, who also co-directed several of the productions of Six (making her the youngest woman to ever direct a Broadway musical) was tapped to direct it.

I bought a ticket to see the musical on a whim and didn’t actually know too much about it before I saw it; I certainly didn’t realize Lucy Moss was directing it! However, I quickly figured out that Six had something to do with the show, as the entire Broadway cast of Six is in the show! There are also two key tributes to the musical within it.

Here’s how Lucy Moss described the show to the New York Times, “The thing that’s really interesting about the original TikTok materials and submissions is that the aspiration for it was so broad. Despite being on a format on the cutting edge of tech and the most Gen-Z thing in the world, people were aspiring to be like a classic musical. The challenge of doing that in the least theatrical space ever — online — was trying to remain true to that aspiration. The aim is a Zoom reading or an online concert that drank 20 Red Bulls and spit on the screen.”

Someone on YouTube brilliantly put together all the Six portions of Ratatouille the Musical into one video.

All the Six Queens are credited as “Rat Queens,” even though they are really just rat backup singers/dancers and aren’t be queens in the story. This is a clear reference to their roles in Six, which tells the stories of Henry VIII’s six wives in a feminist way. All the actors in Six are referred to as “queens” generally and the Six fandom is known as the Queendom.

The Queens hilariously backed up Adam Lambert as Emile as he sang “The Rat’s Way of Life” with brilliant dancing and singing. A few had short lines as well. They closed out the song with an extremely distinctive pose in which they use their fingers to imitate putting crowns on their heads.

The Broadway Six Queens and swings do the distinctive Crown hands pose.

The Broadway Six Queens (and the swings) perform with Adam Lambert as Emile in “A Rat’s Way of Life.”

The Crown Hands appear in the first song “Ex-Wives,” specifically during Catherine of Aragon’s solo (and maybe in a few other places in the show, but it’s been a minute since I’ve watched the whole thing). You can see it in this video of the Six performing at the Olivier Awards at around 2:08.

Carrie-Anne Ingrouille choreographed the musical and was apparently quite the stickler for this pose in particular. When I took a dance workshop from UK Tour Six member Lauren Byrne (blog post here), she said “In the show, it’s horrible because you’re sweating buckets and you don’t want to touch anything to your face – but then the choreographer comes and is like ‘NONE OF YOU WERE TOUCHING YOUR FINGERS ON YOUR CROWN HANDS’ –so she’s really picky about it.”

The Broadway Six queens in the scene where Linguini turns on the light in the kitchen and finds rats everywhere.

Remy singing the first line of the first verse from “Ex-Wives” to yell at Linguini.

That looked like the last time we’d see the Six queens in Ratatouille, but fortunately, we were blessed with another cameo in the scene where Linguini turns on the light in the kitchen and finds rats EVERYWHERE. The queens gave us extreme close-ups of their shocked rat faces and it was FANTASTIC.

Finally, the last Six reference in Ratatouille showed up when Remy tries to yell at Linguini after the press conference. He sing-yells “Listen up, let me tell you a story” but is quickly cut off by Linguini. This is the first sung verse line in “Ex-Wives,” the first song in Six, performed by Catherine of Aragon. You can see this at about 1:07 in the Australia cast’s performance of Ex-Wives to the right.

Ratatouille the TikTok Musical was honestly astonishingly good. This was just a one-off one hour benefit performance, but I sincerely hope the rights issues with putting it together get worked out and it actually goes on to become a real full length musical. Even my super skeptic husband said he’d be willing to pay full price to see it in person in the future!

And that’s your random Six update, enjoy. :)