The true key to female empowerment has at long last been revealed: Christian Dior.
At least, that’s the apparent message of “Pretty, Pretty Girl,” the Act One finale of the long-anticipated—and, thanks to a Netflix preview, already widely mocked—Diana, The Musical. The titular Princess of Wales, finally fed up with the hanky-panky between her husband and his mistress—that’s Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, in case you’ve slept through the past four decades—resolves to wreak revenge by dressing to the nines in a succession of stunning designer threads, upstaging Charles at every turn as he tries to embark on a damage-control tour. What Diana is really doing, librettist and lyricist Joe DiPietro and composer and lyricist David Bryan suggest, is resorting to the only weapon in her arsenal to rebel against the over-scrutinized, under-loved existence that has been forced upon her.
Of course, the ultimately tragic story of the phenom born Diana Spencer was never that simple, and neither is her enduring appeal to generations of women, who were well-represented at a recent performance, cheering Diana’s every wardrobe change—and clucking whenever Charles or Camilla said or did something condescending, meaning frequently. The People’s Princess, as she was dubbed by Tony Blair after her untimely death in 1997, was a forerunner of the kind of oversharing heroine/victims (her daughter-in-law Meghan Markle among them) who have thrived in recent years, evoking empathy in those who might otherwise envy them. Diana inspired a sort of weird twist on schadenfreude: People didn’t enjoy her suffering, but rather loved her because she suffered—from bulimia, from an unhappy marriage, from the rigidity of the royal family she chose to join, albeit at the tender age of nineteen—and she used the very media that allegedly tormented her to make those troubles plain. She continued to court the press after her divorce, posing for glossy magazine covers, dating the son of a billionaire business magnate and, yes, bravely advocating for a range of worthy causes.
[Read Jesse Oxfeld’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
It should come as no surprise, then, that paparazzi figure prominently in Diana. Cloaked figures wielding cameras like assault rifles pop up and multiply like roaches. Time and again, they engulf the princess, who is winningly played by Jeanna de Waal, a pert, agile actress whose warm, pretty singing voice is well suited to the part. If that voice sometimes seems overamplified, the effect is in sync with the arena-rock bombast sprinkled into Bon Jovi keyboardist Bryan’s mildly ingratiating score and John Clancy’s orchestrations. Among Diana’s many virtues, we are reminded, she was a huge eighties pop fan—not a Bach-loving egghead like her husband. The musical is as heavy on populist clichés as a Republican convention speech: Elites Charles and Camilla, played with admirable sportsmanship by Roe Hartrampf and Erin Davie, cunningly plot his union with the simple, unsuspecting virgin, then fret as the world falls in love with her. “We should be happy, dahhling,” Mrs. Parker-Bowles sniffs at one point. “We’ve succeeded beyond our wildest imaginations.” Surely, it took great restraint for Bryan and DiPietro to not rhyme “Camilla” with “gorilla” in a song until well into Act Two.
I could cite a number of even more cringe-worthy lyrics, but why bother? In truth, Diana isn’t much more insipid than any number of musical hagiographies that have popped up in recent decades, and director Christopher Ashley, to his credit, guides it with a light hand, having fun with the dishier aspects of the story rather than wallowing in the pathos. A scene documenting Diana’s rapport with AIDS patients is offset by one in which her boy toy James Hewitt turns up, played by a strapping, shirtless Gareth Keegan, bumping and grinding a bit of relief into our heroine’s dreary lot. Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell, is a stock character, the dutiful but mischievous servant, but Anthony Murphy plays him with infectious relish.
Best of all, there is Judy Kaye, doing double duty as Queen Elizabeth II and Barbara Cartland—yes, the romance novelist, installed here as a sort of naughty fairy godmother who periodically advises Diana. Elizabeth, predictably, offers her own wry wisdom, reacting with sympathy and frustration to the foibles and indulgences of the younger royals, as I imagine her real-life counterpart has done for many, many years. Bryan and DiPietro even give her an eleven o’clock number, “An Officer’s Wife”; it’s pretty much pure sap, but Kaye invests it with dignity and heart.
The real star of Diana, though, is the peerless costumer William Ivey Long, who has drawn inspiration from some of the title character’s favorite designers, and crafted nifty stuff for the whole ensemble. I stopped counting de Waal’s costume changes before intermission, but suffice it to say that if a Tony Award were handed to the actor who juggled the most in one production, no other trouper would stand a chance this season.
Diana opened November 17, 2021, at the Longacre Theatre. Tickets and information: thedianamusical.com
