Oh, I have such mixed feelings about Diana, the new musical based on the life of Princess Di, which is now playing at La Jolla Playhouse.
As someone who got married the same summer as Diana and Charles (and whose marriage is still going strong, thank you very much), I have always felt deeply invested in her life. I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night to watch her wedding — and those of both of her sons — live.
I cried through her funeral and continue to admire her as a mother, style-maker and philanthropist decades after her tragic death.
So I really wanted to love Diana — even though the idea of a musical about her life didn’t really sit right with me. How would they possibly get the tone right?
Well, they didn’t.
The show starts with Diana looking back at herself in her wedding gown, singing, “You know what I was thinking right here, at this moment? Before I agreed to all this, perhaps I should’ve dated him more than 13 times.”
And right there, as the audience laughs, the tone is set. The show will be irreverent. It will put a modern, snarky spin on the story. Sure, it’s funny at time — especially during “The Dress” number, when Diana plots to get back at Charles through her choice of clothes and a song filled with “F” bombs — but why do we feel the need to laugh at the horrible love triangle between Diana, Charles and Camilla? It feels like the tabloid version of her life — you know, the one that killed her.
Diana makes it obvious that Charles and Camilla should have been together from the beginning but it also makes Diana herself look dumb, shallow and manipulative. This doesn’t feel like the appropriate tribute to a woman who did so much good and was so beloved.
The show does feature Diana visiting and shaking hands with patients to try to stop the stigma of HIV, and it does acknowledge at the end that you never know who’s going to change the world. To me, this should have been the focus. Diana deserves better.
The actors — Jeanna de Waal as Diana, Roe Hartrampf as Charles, Erin Davie as Camilla and Judy Kaye as the Queen — are fine but not particularly memorable. This is the kind of show where it’s actually better to sit further away from the stage so the actors blur a little and look more like the characters they’re portraying.
Because Diana was such a fashion icon, the costumes are almost characters themselves, and you will recognize so many of her famous dresses. They bring back a real sense of nostalgia, and I think that’s what could still make the show a success.
People love Diana and they love anything about her. As I listened to audience members talking about the show afterwards, they seemed to find lots of criticize yet they then started talking about their own memories of watching the royal wedding and how great her boys turned out and how sad it was when she died. All those warm, mushy gushy feelings easily overpower any negative thoughts about the show.
Every time I see a show at the La Jolla Playhouse now, I keep hoping it will be the next Come From Away. Unfortunately, Diana isn’t it.
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