The Revolutionary War notwithstanding, we Americans love the English.
So it was not surprising to find a full house of adoring Anglophiles as the Mobtown Players presented the U.S. premiere of “Six Dead Queens and An Inflatable Henry,” a 90-minute musical romp with the dead brides of King Henry VIII.
Director Erin Riley studied theater in England, where she witnessed the Foursight Theatre Company?s production of the play and decided to bring it back to the colonies.
“I adored the way [they] took a no holds barred, in your face approach to breathing life into these women who are traditionally viewed as portraits in an art museum,” Riley recounts in the director?s note.
These art-portrait images are projected upon the theater?s back wall in the forms of Catherine of Aragon (Virginia Weeks), Anne Boleyn (Stephanie Ranno), Jane Seymour (Melissa McGinley), Anne of Cleves (Kristen Zwobot), Katherine Howard (Hannah Marr) and Catherine Parr (Kerry Brady), wives numbers one through six.
The ladies, in full 16th-century queenly regalia, lie side by side upon a four-poster, jostling beneath the blankets for room and their place in history ? fighting to determine which is “the true queen.”
Through the nine scenes that unfold, we gain insights into the circumstances each woman faced as she found herself married to the most powerful man in England.
Katherine Howard laments she was no more than a child when she met Henry and had no preparation for the intrigues of court. Anne Boleyn was beset with rumors of being a witch. Even Jane Seymour, “Henry?s favorite,” was left to die once her duty as a “breeding sow” was complete. These ladies in eternity are trying to find strength in their pain and ultimately, each other.
The literally inflatable “Henry” ? a man-shaped balloon complete with crown, Union Jack underwear and chest hair ? makes his appearance, and the queens get their metaphoric revenge, leaving him deflated, while they continue to “decompose.”
Together, the six actresses of “SDQ” deliver a feminist tour de force ? witty, uplifting, a six-headed vagina monologue that makes one wonder why these women are doomed to “do this over all over again.”
Why, for our pleasure, which is royally served.
If you go
“Six Dead Queens and An Inflatable Henry”
» Venue: Mobtown Theatre at Meadow Mill, 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 114, Baltimore (Hampden)
» When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays through March 8
» Tickets: $15
» Info: 410-467-3057; mobtownplayers.com
