"But if you decide to write a musical about a real woman, known worldwide, who died tragically while still a young mother, something more rigorous is demanded. “Diana,” though, is lazy and thus neither entertaining nor insightful; though audiences talk back to it at will, it’s not even campy fun. It’s just exploitative, doing to the Princess of Wales pretty much what the tabloid press — let alone the monarchy — did to her in the first place."
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"Besides lacking a compelling point of view to make this familiar tale fresh, the slick musical retread tends to take a campy approach as it chronicles Diana’s tumultuous marriage to the ever-unfaithful Prince Charles. That includes a cameo and commentary by her step-grandmother, romance novelist Barbara Cartland, gushing and gabbing in an explosion of Pepto Bismol pink. Diana’s 11 o’clock ditty about how she’ll “light the world” doesn’t balance the scales."
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"Diana itself skips over most of its heroine’s very real issues—her eating disorders and suicide attempts are name-checked only briefly—and dwells on the tabloid drama of her Gone with the Windsors romantic entanglements. (“It’s the Thrilla in Manila / But with Diana and Camilla!”) And while it portrays Diana as eager to move beyond the world’s superficial dismissal of her as “a pretty pretty girl in a pretty pretty dress,” it unabashedly elicits applause for costume designer William Ivey Long’s reproductions of her most famous outfits, and gets an early laugh at the expense of Camilla’s appearance. This is shabby stuff, and the laziness of the writing extends to the smallest details."
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"Diana is a muddle, its few pleasures coming from Jeanna de Waal’s perfectly acceptable singing, a sly turn by the terrific Erin Davie as Camilla Parker Bowles, some cool dresses and the scattered unintentional humor that had the crowd response at the reviewed performance, complete with a well-timed “f*ck off” aimed at the arrogant Prince Charles, suggesting the musical might be primed for Rocky Horror-level audience engagement."
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"There is something audacious about this musical’s suggestion that the people’s princess belongs to the people, by way of the popular medium’s basest, bluntest, most blatantly pandering form. Those who’ve watched “Diana” on Netflix, where a filmed version of the stage show was released in October, know it’s unnerving — in the uncanny way of a wax museum come to life, Kool-Aid pulsing through veins instead of blood."
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“A show that purportedly gives voice to a woman scorned and manipulated gleefully surrenders to its inner Jackie Collins, offering up trashy thrills punctuated with assertive power ballads. Strenuously uplifting one moment and deliriously campy the next, Diana is a musical suffering from poor impulse control. For certain show fans, it will be the season's guilty pleasure; you know who you are.”
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"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. "
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"It is not good. It is not terrible. It is bloodless, procedural, and, in Christopher Ashley’s staging, constantly, exhaustingly turned up to 11. It lacks nearly any wit, poetry, or sense of fun—except in the few moments when the tone shifts, briefly and inexplicably, to camp."
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