Once upon a time, a young girl named Diana decided that she was going to marry Prince Andrew, or Prince Charles. ‘Hopefully, Prince Charles,’ she declared.
As for Charles, he knew he should commit — but the slipper never fit.
That’s sung, by the way.
Yes, I’m at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego for an early preview of a musical fantasy fairy tale bearing the title ‘Diana’.
Jeanna de Waal, an actress from Solihull who has based herself in New York for the past decade, plays the people’s princess
Yes, I’m at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego for an early preview of a musical fantasy fairy tale bearing the title ‘Diana
Roe Hartrampf plays Prince Charles, and Erin Davie is Camilla Parker Bowles, described as the ‘villainess’
I schlepped down from LA on Tuesday, though the show’s director Christopher Ashley and its authors, lyricists and composers, Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, were still working on a new opening, which should have been installed by now.
Jeanna de Waal, an actress from Solihull who has based herself in New York for the past decade, plays the people’s princess.
Roe Hartrampf plays Prince Charles, and Erin Davie is Camilla Parker Bowles, described as the ‘villainess’.
Judy Kaye, a Tony-Award winning actress, plays both the Queen and romance writer Dame Barbara Cartland (Diana’s step-grandmother).
Ms de Waal, meanwhile, told me: ‘I’m trying to play a Diana people will recognise; and I’m trying to be part of a show that celebrates her’
The show’s premise is that Diana’s head was stuffed full of a Cartland-esque sense of what love is. However, La Cartland (who appears to have been dressed in pink candy floss) puts Diana right by telling her, angrily, that men are ‘liars and cheats’, and suggesting the poor gel should read other books.
As the Queen, Kaye also has the show’s best line . . . if it doesn’t get cut. ‘In the old days we would have chopped off your head and be done with you,’ she tells Diana. She waits a beat, then adds: ‘I miss the old days.’
Ms de Waal, meanwhile, told me: ‘I’m trying to play a Diana people will recognise; and I’m trying to be part of a show that celebrates her.’
Diana, the character, starts off foolish and naive and then, as de Waal puts it, ‘finds her power’. She also discovers how to dress. Her frocks, designed (with the keen eye of a Diana devotee) by William Ivey Long, are sublime.
I liked the song The Dress that accompanied a set piece about the ‘revenge dress’ the princess wore to the Serpentine gallery the night Prince Charles admitted his adultery on television, to show him what he was missing.
The show is not a documentary, though there are some ‘facts’ in it. My
