TV Review - Diana: The Musical

Christopher Ashley is the artistic director for La Jolla Playhouse, a not-for-profit theatre on the campus of University of California, San Diego. La Jolla Playhouse is a premiere stage for Broadway productions or productions that go on to win Tony Awards. Ashley has been the artistic director since 2007, but, after nearly 15 years, he's finally getting national recognition. In 2015, La Jolla Playhouse premiered the musical Come From Away, which opened on Broadway in 2017 and was then nominated for seven Tony Awards. Ashley won the one and only prize it took that night, which was Best Direction of a Musical. The success of Come From Away put him on track to direct a film adaptation, but that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, a stage recording was made of the show that was released in September of this year on Apple TV+.

This musical by David Bryan, a member of Bon Jovi, and Joe DiPietro, a playwright and lyricist, premiered in 2019 at La Jolla Playhouse. Bryan and DiPietro are previous Tony Award winners for Memphis (2009). Bryan and DiPietro's show about Princess Diana was supposed to open on Broadway in March 2020, but, it too was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Ashley was again tasked to do a stage recording, which would go to a streaming service. Unlike Come From Away or Hamilton (2020) on Disney +, this is probably one of only a few times that a Broadway production was made available on video for mass consumption before it actually played on Broadway. Bryan and DiPietro's musical will play on Broadway but not until November, a month after its being put on the Internet and the small screen.

Jeanna de Waal stars as Diana Spencer, a young woman born into British nobility who would go on to become the Princess of Wales, marrying the future King of England and being mother to the next in line to the throne. The musical presumably starts in 1977 when Diana first meets the future king and continues for the next 20 years of her up-and-down life, finally concluding in 1997. Obviously, Diana was one of the most pursued celebrities in the world where her almost every move was documented in the press. For junkies of that media, there will probably be nothing here that is surprising. She is a young girl who becomes disillusioned with the idea of marrying a tall, dark, handsome prince, as she struggles for happiness and even sanity under the constant limelight.

One can be entertained by Waal's performance and singing chops. One can also be entertained by Bryan and DiPietro's songs, which through clever rhymes and melodies weave together the story and the characterizations. If one isn't an aficionado of the Buckingham Palace intrigue, or even if one is only a casual aficionado, such as myself, meaning I'm a fan of The Crown (2016), the fourth season of which introduced Diana, then there are some things to take away here. There are in fact some things I learned here that I didn't get from watching The Crown. Perhaps, I wasn't paying enough attention to the Emmy-winning series, but there were still things here that surprised me.

Roe Hartrampf (Emily in Paris and Madame Secretary) co-stars as Prince Charles, the aforementioned future King of England. He's not king yet. His mother is the Queen, the current monarch and she has certain obligations and duties that she needs him to fulfill. He's the buttoned-up playboy who is in love with a married woman and the Queen insists he can't follow his heart to pursue that married woman. Instead, the Queen insists he marry another, more noble woman. He reluctantly starts dating Diana, which feels more like an arranged marriage.

In The Crown, Charles' meeting and connection to Diana are depicted quite romantically. That's not the case in this musical. What I didn't get from The Crown is the age difference between Charles and Diana. Charles is 12 years older than Diana, nearly 13 years older. He first met her when she was only 16. He presumably started dating her only a couple of years later. He was in his 30's and she was still a teenager. The Crown doesn't underscore that point. In The Crown, it feels more as if Charles and Diana are closer in age, if not the same age. This is mainly due to Emmy-winner Josh O'Connor playing Charles and appearing younger than Charles actually was. However, Hartrampf appears to be the proper age. Waal reads older than Diana actually was, but, at least this musical points out the age difference in a couple of scenes.

The fourth season of The Crown captures what are the first decade or so of Charles and Diana's relationship or lack thereof. This musical encompasses their whole time together, which again was about two decades. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff in that second decade that I didn't know, in terms of certain details. There's obviously a lot more about Diana that the fifth season of The Crown will likely explore. We get the major bullet points like Diana's post-partum depression, her ballet dance, her back-and-forth relationship with the media, her affair with James Hewitt, played by Gareth Keegan, as first a shirtless, swaggering hunk on a horse, as well as her visit to see HIV and AIDS patients at a time of heightened homophobia against gay men.

The major through-line is that she was a woman trapped, mainly trapped in a loveless marriage. I don't think the musical, unlike The Crown, underscores how trapped Diana really was. Diana was seemingly trapped by external forces that mainly included the so-called rules of the British royalty, the protocols and traditions and such. The Crown makes that more clear. Here, Diana seems more trapped by lingering feelings for Charles, which all become unrequited. It culminates in a fairly good tête-à-tête between Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles, played by Erin Davie. Camilla was the married woman with whom Charles truly loved and with whom he was secretly having an affair. It's a juicy piece of soap opera-like face-off that I enjoyed.

Rated PG-13 for strong language and for suggestive material.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 57 mins.

Available on Netflix.