Tony Award-winning director Christopher Ashley (Come From Away) and the wrtiers behind the Tony Award-winning musical Memphis (Joe DiPietro and David Bryan) bring us face-to-face with one of the 20th century's most compelling figures in this landmark musical event, featuring an epic and sweeping contemporary score.
I will level with you. Diana, the new musical which just opened at the Longacre Theatre, is not 'good' by cis-hetero-patriarchal standards of quality. But let's decenter that trade and focus on what it approximates: a maxi-challenge on RuPaul's Drag Race blessedly mixed with a Simpsons parody of Evita (which, of course, they've already done). It has the preposterous high gloss of a Ru production, with The Simpsons' innate understanding of the overly-literal silliness that makes the form work.
This number, titled 'The Dress,' encapsulates the combination of bad taste and tasty badness that is Diana, one of the most enjoyable Broadway farragos of the 21st century so far. The real Princess Di died in 1997 at the age of 36, and her story might be the stuff of opera. Instead, in defiance of the potential gravity of their subject, book writer Joe DiPietro and composer David Bryan-who share blame for the show's lyrics-have opted for a campy, dishy pop-rock clip job of memorable moments from Diana's life, rendered in a stream of ploddingly banal rhyming couplets set to tunes that sometimes assume a vaguely 1980s accent. (Don't think New Wave; think Starship and Sheena Easton.) When the lyrics stray from the generic, it is often for the worse. 'Wasn't I the most beautiful bride? A glittering jewel right by his side,' sings Diana when she begins to wise up. 'Serves me right for marrying a Scorpio.' This may have been one of the half-dozen times when a gentleman in back of me at the theater uttered a sassy 'Period!' in response to a line onstage.
2019 | San Diego, CA (Regional) |
World Premiere at La Jolla Playhouse San Diego, CA (Regional) |
2021 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2022 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical | Jeanna de Waal |
2022 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting Design for a Musical | Natasha Katz |
2022 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Wig and Hair | Paul Huntley |
2022 | Tony Awards | Best Costume Design of a Musical | William Ivey Long |
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