The musical Six, in which the wives of Henry VIII assemble for an uproarious concert, has a jubilant, high-energy finale but at Saturday night’s performance at Leeds Grand there was extra cause for celebration. Actor Natalie Pilkington was surprised to find her partner, Andy McGuire, take to the stage and make a short speech about putting the “feelgood factor back into theatre” after the crisis caused by the pandemic.
McGuire then went down on one knee to propose, Pilkington said yes and the theatre erupted, with the rest of the cast showering the couple with confetti.
Pilkington is a “swing” performer, who understudies several roles, on the UK tour of Six. On Saturday, she was starring as Anne Boleyn, a part she played for the first time on the tour last month. In Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow’s musical, which grew from a student show at the Edinburgh festival to being a West End smash, each of the six queens takes the lead vocal on their own song. Boleyn’s fizzy number, Don’t Lose Ur Head, is one of the funniest as she recounts how she and Henry “tried to elope but the pope said nope”.
McGuire said that he and Pilkington met through theatre four and a half years ago and that she and the other actors in Six had desperately missed being on stage during the pandemic. The morning after the proposal, Pilkington tweeted: “Still cannot get over last night! I’m so overwhelmed with all your lovely messages & tweets I promise I’ve read every single one! OMG I’M ENGAGED!” Leeds Grand toasted the couple on Twitter with the message: “What a way to end the week!”
It is not the first musical to end with a standing ovation for a marriage proposal. A couple named Devon and Wilson got engaged at a Valentine’s Day performance of the hit show Kinky Boots on Broadway in 2016.
