Sunday Rain with Six Queens

While History Watches

The thing about watching "Six" the daring, all-female musical in 2025 is that it feels less like historical theater and more like a preview of coming attractions. Crystal and I share one umbrella through the February rain, each puddle-splash a small act of joy while we can still claim the streets as our own. The rain falls soft as whispered warnings while we make our way to the Lena Horne Theatre, where six queens are about to remind us how quickly rights can become privileges, and privileges can become crimes.

Inside, we watch Henry VIII's wives transform chronicle into prophecy. When Catherine of Aragon demands to know what she did wrong, it echoes with every woman who's had to justify her choices to a court, a congress, a country of men who think they know better. Anne Boleyn's wit cuts sharper now, in a time when women's jokes about power are increasingly labeled as threats to the established order.

After the final standing ovation, we step back into the rain and take the long way to The Long Room, because in 2025, every walk feels like practice for when they might try to limit our movements, our choices, our freedom to gather. The golden letters of "IRISH GASTROPUB" glow through the mist like a beacon, promising sanctuary in a world that's starting to feel uncomfortably familiar to the one our queens just sang about.

Under the red-vaulted ceiling that arches like waves of warmth, we settle at the long bar that's heard generations of whispered rebellions. The leather stools hold decades of stories, and tonight they're holding ours—two women watching the present rhyme with the past, counting the ways history isn't just repeating but reimagining itself with better technology and worse intentions.

"Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived" sounds less like a historical mnemonic and more like a timeline of reproductive rights in America. Each queen's story hits differently now: Catherine of Aragon's faith in justice betrayed by men who changed the rules to suit themselves. Anne Boleyn's sharp intelligence branded as dangerous. Jane Seymour's worth measured only by what her body could provide. Anna of Cleves' appearance legislated by men who never had to meet their own standards. Katherine Howard's youth exploited then punished. Catherine Parr surviving by playing a game whose rules kept changing.

Through our rain-jeweled window, 2025 looks increasingly like 1525, just with better lighting design. The great peaks of Manhattan rise around us like courtiers at Hampton Court, some bowing to power, others standing defiantly straight. Radio City's marquee glows like a rebel torch in the rain, while the Empire State Building wears its illuminated crown like a queen who refuses to abdicate. They're trying to push us back into history's shadows, but from up here, we can see every attempt to dim the lights of progress, and we can see every light that refuses to go out.

The crimson vaults above us hold heat and history in equal measure, while we talk about how every generation of women has to learn the same defensive moves, just set to different soundtracks. In Tudor times, they at least had the decency to be obvious about their misogyny—crowns and proclamations, rather than algorithms and legislative sessions.

From Henry's court to the Supreme Court, it's still the same dance: men in robes deciding women's fates. The rain keeps falling outside, soft as confession, while The Long Room holds us like a sanctuary that serves single malt instead of absolution. Our glasses catch the light like liquid amber, while we compare notes on how it feels to watch history backing up like a clogged drain.

The six queens taught us that survival sometimes looks like a pop concert, and The Long Room is teaching us that resistance sometimes looks like a quiet conversation in a pub that's outlasted every regime it's witnessed. Each drop of rain against the windows writes another verse of warning, each clink of glasses another note of defiance.

Because that's what you do in times like these: you watch six queens turn trauma into triumph, you drink with friends who remember better days and plan for better ones to come, and you thank whatever saints are listening that places like The Long Room still exist—still pouring, still providing shelter from both the rain and the reigning powers that be.

Later, from our aerie in the Needle, the city unfolds below us like a dark tapestry threaded with light. Radio City's neon bleeds purple onto the rain-slicked street, while taxis thread through the canyon of buildings like golden beads on a rosary of resistance. The Empire State Building stands in the distance, its tower lit in defiant rainbow colors against the graphite sky, a reminder that even in these shadowed times, some landmarks refuse to dim their light.

From this height, the streets below glisten like wet silk, their patterns telling stories of persistence: here, the steady stream of headlights moving past Radio City, each one carrying its own small universe of dreams and determinations; there, the office buildings with their chess-board patterns of lit windows, each square holding someone working late, someone plotting their next move in this great game of survival and resistance.

The rain paints everything in liquid light – the gleaming spires, the neon signs, the endless stream of traffic flowing like a river of consciousness through the city's arteries. Looking down at this glittering geometry of power and possibility, we can see both what we're fighting for and what we're fighting against: each illuminated window a vote for staying awake, staying aware, staying in the light.

History may be circular, but so is raising a glass to those who survived it. And to those who are surviving it still.