So, I watched Diana: The Musical the other night.
Partly because I had to, but it was a had-to I volunteered for, being such an avid consumer (and sometimes chronicler) of information about Princess Diana, whose life story is still being pieced together more than 24 years after her death in all sorts of creative ways, some of which have hewn closer to the truth than others.
Also, I very much enjoy musicals as a rule. I tend to tear up as early as mid-opening number, so touched am I both by the collective effort that goes into pulling off all that effervescent singing and dancing (In the Heights got me good), and by the anticipation of all the emotions to come.
Diana, streaming now on Netflix ahead of the show's Nov. 17 Broadway premiere, was no exception. But place those tears squarely in the category of "what's to come."
Because in a world containing not only a towering stack of tell-all books about the Princess of Wales, but also the sumptuous, let-us-fill-in-the-blanks storytelling of The Crown that—much to a certain culture minister's distress—immerses you so completely in that royal world that you start conflating reality with artistic license, plus Spencer, an experimental treatise on Diana's thought process as she ponders how to break free from her gilded cage with Kristen Stewart playing the haunted, unhappy wife...
Let's just say, it's unlikely that Diana: The Musical will ever be considered an essential addition to the canon, considering what else we have to choose from to smile at, tsk-tsk and weep over. Sampling some ripped-from-reality lines, such as Prince Charles' "whatever love means" (here tucked into his hasty proposal rather than uttered as it was in their first TV interview as an engaged couple), this is far more Diana-by-Numbers than inspired update of a story everybody knows. (Which is possible to achieve: The latest staging of A Christmas Carol just won five Tonys and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Adaptation.)
The songs, starting with Diana belting out the pros and cons of being "Underestimated," take us through the title character's greatest hits: Getting engaged at 19, the royal wedding of 1981, charming the public and outshining Charles on their first trip to Wales, the birth of their children ("Darling, I'm holding our son, so let me say, 'Jolly well done!'"), realizing that all's fair in love and war and her weapons will be fashion and the British press, her stigma-bashing meeting with HIV/AIDS patients against Charles' wishes that she find a more "appropriate" cause, gleefully spilling her guts to biographer Andrew Morton and stepping out in that iconic black cocktail number after Charles admitted his infidelity in a televised interview.
Because "revenge looks best in an eff-you dress."
That line pretty much encapsulates the show's literal approach, with every plot point laid on thick: The paparazzi, who actually have one of the best song-and-dance numbers, "Snap, Click," all wear trench coats, just in case you couldn't tell they were bad. Diana's riding instructor turned paramour, cavalry officer James Hewitt, is first introduced atop a raised saddle, wearing only skintight breeches. At one point, two beds are rolled out to assure us that dueling extramarital affairs are taking place.
With the staging nothing to write home about, especially when we've got The Crown to ogle, Netflix may be the ideal medium to experience the production so that you can see star Jeanna de Waal, nailing Diana's famous head tilt, up close. The lyrics may veer between cleverness and corn, but her eyes—alternately emitting joy, heartbreak and spite—speak volumes.
Though there's no question as to whom we're supposed to be mad at here, the book by Joe DiPietro, who co-wrote the lyrics with composer David Bryan, doesn't shy away from Diana's manipulative side.
The musical could just has easily have been called Charles vs. Diana, seeing as how almost all of the choices the princess makes are all about first placating and then pissing off her husband (Roe Hartrampf, supercilious throughout)—whom she insists she really does love, although in this telling it's impossible to see why.
The Prince of Wales is most likable in an early scene when he takes Diana to a Bach concert and she fantasizes that she might yet turn Charles into a hip guy who dances to Prince and Freddie Mercury. Sadly, he thinks there are three Durans.
Diana vs. Camilla wouldn't have been far off, either, as Camilla Parker-Bowles (played by Erin Davie) is a constant, tweed-wearing presence, from when she bloodlessly gives her thumbs-up to Charles' impending nuptials (while they're in their bathrobes, together), figuring Diana's no match for her as a soulmate, to her anticlimactic meeting with the queen (Judy Kaye, coming off as more opinionated longtime governess than mother or monarch) once Charles and Diana have finally split up.
There's so much Other Woman, however, that it negates the possibility that Charles ever intended to try and make an honest go of it with Diana, since almost everything she says sends him rushing back into Camilla's arms. As he keeps saying, out loud.
Prince William and Prince Harry are talked about (much is made of Diana's reported insistence that Charles wanted a girl and was disappointed when their second son was born) but aren't represented onstage after infancy. Diana's postpartum depression after William's birth and instances of self-harm are mentioned, but they're relegated to the plot's overall bullet-point structure. Diana accused of hurting herself for attention, check!
And while much is made of the Morton book, there's no mention of Diana's cataclysmic 1995 sit-down with Martin Bashir, which in real life was arranged through deceitful methods and hastened her and Charles' divorce after several years of separation.
Fruit of that bombshell interview does crop up, though, such as when Camilla is referred to as the third person in Charles and Diana's marriage.
The queen, unfortunately, is pretty one-note until the show's penultimate number, when she reminisces to a departing Diana about her brief bout with simplicity, when she and Prince Philip (also not a character here) were newlyweds and she was just "an officer's wife."
Before that, she mainly serves to give Charles terrible relationship advice (monarchy first, everyone's feelings a distant meh), but not nefariously enough to make her a full-fledged villain. It doesn't help that Kaye pulls double duty as Barbara Cartland, a period-romance novelist Diana admires who pops up a couple of times as a Greek chorus of one for what's supposed to be comedic effect.
Though humor and tragedy are natural companions, Diana is almost macabrely breezy at times, considering where this story is headed. But while knowing where it goes may be the main thing that prevents you from choosing to watch it at all, once you do... It's impossible to stop rooting for her.
Right up until it registers in Diana's eyes that none of what she hopes to do with her newfound freedom will come to pass. Which we knew going in, but that ending never fails to break your heart.
Diana: The Musical is streaming on Netflix.