“Diana: The Musical” is a hunk of Wensleydale cheese now streaming on Netflix, and in this case the “r” in “streaming” is optional.
Filmed onstage at New York’s Longacre Theatre in “Hamilton” and “Come From Away” live-capturestyle (though, eerily, without an audience), the project precedes its own pandemically delayed December 2021 Broadway premiere. Judging by this Netflix iteration, it’s best taken as an antidote for rabid fans of royal British intrigue. They may think they’re insatiable, but they’re about to meet their Waterloo with this thing.
Already “Diana: The Musical” has drawn slack-jawed quality comparisons to the film version of “Cats.” But “Cats” was different — dubious material handled badly, a compilation of misjudgments and digital fur. This one’s a matter of shoddy material staged efficiently and fluidly by director Christopher Ashley, aided by a solid cast of pros swimming upstream, trying hard not to mentally rewrite librettist and lyricist Joe DiPietro’s words with every stroke.
“Living rather large/ Yet feeling rather small”: That’s the pIight of Lady Diana Spencer, whose alliance with Prince Charles and the attendant miseries of fame at age 19 give the musical its simple central idea. (The forthcoming “Spencer” deals with the subject in a more compressed time frame.) A blur of flashbulb effects at the musical’s opening establishes the visual motif. The song “Snap, Click” introduces a roving, rain-coated pack of jeering tabloid press photographers and reporters, going for Diana’s throat. Sample lyric: “We know that your aim is/ to be friggin’ famous!” Sample audience response: That’s not a good enough lyric.
More sideways than forward, the score’s driven by the demure power ballads and watery ‘90s vibe conjured by composer David Bryan, of Bon Jovi. The sound would seem to suit the narrative, at least chronologically. Dramatically, though, the music reduces every marital argument, every dancing-footmen-and-maids interlude, to the same brand of sonic gloss.
The melodies, you forget; the lyrics, alas, you remember. Charles, cradling newborn: “Darling, I’m holding our son/ So let me say, jolly well done.” Chorus of onlookers at a fancy party thrown by Charles’ lover, Camilla Parker Bowles (Erin Davie), crashed by her romantic rival: “It’s the ‘Thrilla in Manilla’/ But with Diana and Camilla!” At the Royal Ballet gala fundraiser, Diana busts out another one of costumer designer William Ivey Long’s dazzling creations, to which to partygoers respond with: “She electrified the joint!”
Some of this is intentional humor, some isn’t, but none of it gets behind anyone’s eyes long enough for us to see and feel anything more than: nice dress! Or: nice abs! (Gareth Keegan plays royal riding instructor James Hewitt, Diana’s great and good friend.) It’s not grand opera; “Diana: The Musical” is just trying to give audiences a good time, a quick-time trot through a young woman’s too-short, too-scrutinized, too-too life. But that way, in these songwriters’ hands, lies glibness and the undertow of camp.
Only stalwart Judy Kaye, as the Queen and, in a secondary role, romance novelist and distant Spencer relative Barbara Cartland, seems hip to the staggering squareness of the enterprise. She’s queen of the sardonic side-eye, casting withering glances at a show about a martyr “lost in blinding light.” The show itself seems to be squinting at its subject, unable to locate the right mixture of tones, or build a viable musical around her fabulousness.
It’s tolerable, I suppose, if you don’t have to listen to it. Unfortunately it’s a musical so you have to listen to it.
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'DIANA: THE MUSICAL'
1 star (out of 4)
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for strong language and for suggestive and thematic material)
Running time: 1:57
Where to watch: Now streaming on Netflix
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