Tony Awards 2002: Broadway musical Six, first performed at Edinburgh Fringe, nominated for eight Tony Awards

A hit Broadway musical which started life as a student show in a makeshift venue at the Edinburgh Fringe almost five years ago has been nominated for eight Tony Awards – the highest honour in US theatre.

The creators of historical comedy musical Six say they are “so humbled and grateful” to be in the frame for the prestigious awards.

Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, who wrote the show while at Cambridge University together, thanked the organisation as well as giving “a major shout-out to the American accent”.

The show first ran in a 100-seat room at Sweet Venues at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017, before being performed in London’s West End.

Its official Broadway opening night came on October 3 2021 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, when Moss became the youngest female director of a Broadway musical in four decades.

Six is a modern retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII presented as a pop concert.

The wives take turns telling their individual stories to see who suffered the most due to the tyrannical British king and thus should become the group’s lead singer.

The musical is nominated for Best New Musical, Best Original Score, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Costume Design of a Musical, Best Lighting Design of a Musical, Best Sound Design of a Musical, Best Choreography, and Best Orchestrations at the 75th Tony Awards.

Six originally debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2017.

In a statement following the announcement, Marlow and Moss said: “We created Six as a fun summer project for us and our friends in 2017, thinking that, come the autumn, we’d be moving on with our lives and like becoming lawyers or accountants or something, so for that show to be nominated for a literal Tony Award is just beyond.

“It’s a truly amazing, baffling honour to be even considered in the same category as these other wonderful pieces. We are so humbled, grateful, and handsome.”

They added: “We’d just love to give a major shout-out to the American accent.

“In our own accents… the word ‘category’ is absolutely not stressed like it is, repeatedly, in our show’s final number but having the opportunity to bring the show to Broadway really has allowed that lyric to blossom from noticeably shoddy writing to a seemingly innocuous rhyme.

“So, thanks America.”