de Waal, Jeanna

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares149 Views

    Why ‘Diana’ Is the Show We Didn’t Deserve

    by

    On the eve of a concert with three of the flop musical’s talented stars, time to celebrate a production that thrilled loyal fans — and at least one critic.Broadway’s comeback season was a hurricane. Not even the heavily awarded revival of a Sondheim favorite like “Company” could withstand shaky ticket sales brought on by a pandemic-wary theatergoing community.There was still much to praise, and much that will be seared into memory. But more than most other musicals that opened last season, the one whose songs and sheer audacity stand the best chance to live on in my heart — and on my shower playlists — is the one that shone briefly, amid a deluge of vitriol.The one that played a mere 59 performances, and whose Netflix presentation won five Razzie Awards: the ill-fated “Diana, the Musical.”This week, Roe Hartrampf, the show’s nefarious Prince Charles, will play a two-night engagement at 54 Below, joined by Jeanna de Waal (who portrayed Princess Diana) and, also on the first night, Erin Davie (Diana’s rival for Charles’s affections, Camilla Parker Bowles).Though they won’t be singing from its score, Hartrampf said the musical will be cheekily referenced throughout.At rehearsals for the club act — ironically enough, at a Midtown studio across from the Longacre Theater where they once reigned — the three reminisced with a mix of good humor and workmanlike acceptance. A promotional blurb for the concert, after all, nods knowingly at Hartrampf’s Razzie nomination, and the brief Broadway run.It also makes reference to the Netflix fiasco that followed after the musical premiered on the streaming service months ahead of its Broadway opening. Recorded without an audience in the middle of the pandemic shutdown, it landed with a thud and that response helped determine its eventual fate.“Part of the struggle was that the audience didn’t know what to expect from a musical about Diana,” Hartrampf said after the rehearsal. “They were sort of waiting for us to tell them, ‘You can laugh because this is a comedy, or stay quiet because it’s a drama.’ They needed to be shown what this piece was going to be.”When I reviewed “Diana” in November, I called it a “giddy orgy of theatrical excess” that combined the “preposterous high gloss” of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” with “‘The Simpsons’ ’ innate understanding of the overly-literal silliness that makes the form work.”By the time I attended the musical’s premature final performance barely a month later, the cast had leaned all the way into the absurdity. The hyperkinetic ensemble (some of the most all-out, on-point dancing of the season) was cheeky as ever, but the lead actors seemed to be in on the fun, too. De Waal’s naughty wink had grown more flamboyant, and the cast reveled in the extravagance of her expletive-laden song about the dress Diana wore to show up her romantic rival.“It was always supposed to be a rock show, it always had humor, and it was always supposed to be heightened,” de Waal said.De Waal and Hartrampf in a musical number in which Diana imagines herself in a disco instead of at a classical music concert.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThough the losers at the Razzies named her worst actress, de Waal’s extraordinary, vocally gymnastic performance earned a Drama Desk nomination. I would have handed her a Tony nomination, too, with a special citation for Grace Under Internet Fire. She’d already been apologizing for the Netflix special by the time the show opened, and kept off social media throughout its run.De Waal’s performance sold me on the idea that Diana Spencer was a 19-year-old robbed of a comfortable young adulthood, cynically plucked by stuffy royals for good optics, then discarded once her personhood got in the way. (That problem hasn’t gone away.) Her Diana was temperamental, petty and crass, but ultimately winning.The music, by the Bon Jovi keyboard player David Bryan, was as arena-ready as you’d expect, calling back to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s early marriage of rock bombast and theatrical silliness (Exhibit A: “Evita.”) The lyrics (by Bryan and Joe DiPietro) were scarcely more profound than a “Live Laugh Love” poster but, sung with full force, they stuck like Super Glue. Diana’s “I could use a prince to save me from my prince,” rather silly on paper, came across as a primal scream.And the director Christopher Ashley, a Tony winner for his work on “Come From Away,” kept “Diana” moving as seamlessly and hypnotically as the princess’ frenzied, tabloid-ready life. (Nathan Lucrezio, who played her biographer Andrew Morton on Broadway, will appear in Hartrampf’s act as well.)Among the criticisms aimed at “Diana” was that it exploited a real woman’s tragic story for pop consumption. To that point: Every biographical narrative can be said to be inherently reductive and exploitative. If the director Pablo Larraín and the actress Kristen Stewart can (deservedly) score awards love for their cinematic take on Diana as the “final girl” in a horror movie (2021’s “Spencer”), I see no reason this musical should be punished for molding the source material to fit the form’s razzle-dazzle structure.Was “Diana” tasteful or poetic? Definitely not. But it was fun. Remember fun? So many productions this season didn’t, setting their sights instead on scoring political points, to varying success and an even dimmer sense of play.You have to take a work on its own terms, and “Diana” set them 10 minutes in, when the soon-to-be princess took over cello duties from Mstislav Rostropovich and did a stage-dive into a royal crowd as Prince Charles did the robot. This fantasy sequence — illustrating how Diana would rather be on a date at a disco than at a dreary classical concert — reflected the show’s unapologetic commitment to pop maximalism.Though biographical obligations sometimes strangled the book, even its narrative failings were saved by outlandish directorial choices. (If you somehow forgot the dizzy tone during intermission, Act 2 opened with Diana’s secret lover, the riding instructor James Hewitt, shirtless astride a saddle, shrieking a fierce high E.)“As much as there was this group of people who loved it,” said Davie, at right, “there were others who were like, ‘How dare you?’”Hilary Swift for The New York TimesI count the glitzy show among works that, pardon my youthfulness, “slay”: highlighting the improbable achievements of an underdog (usually a woman) with the subtlety of a six-foot sword, and twice its shine.It’s what makes Dolly Levi’s arrival at the Harmonia Gardens so glamorous; Evita’s “Rainbow High” fashions so decadent; Momma Rose’s ambition so delicious. The spectacle of someone transcending their given situation is woven into the fabric of musical theater; Diana quick-changing through several outfits in one number, as she announces her plan to reclaim her visibility, had that in spades.Still, Davie admitted, “it turned a lot of people off. As much as there was this group of people who loved it, there were others who were like, ‘How dare you?’”As with many a critically reviled Broadway musical, those who loved it banded together, nicknaming themselves “Difanas.” They clung to the gowns, the belting, the insane boldness of an AIDS patient singing to the princess, “I may be unwell, but I’m handsome as hell.”One such fan, Lizzie Milanovich (who uses they/them pronouns) designed a custom “Diana” sweater and then tweeted an offer, expecting a few inquiries. They wound up fielding 180 orders, they told me, including one for Hartrampf.“We have to credit Twitter so much for creating the audience that we did have,” Hartrampf said. “The week the movie came out, Twitter was rough. But then the backlash to the backlash was so wonderful, with people defending our show and taking ownership of the material, and understanding what the show was meant to be.”Attendees at its final performance were the girls and the gays — theater aficionados, writers and performers who have gone down enough YouTube rabbit holes to know a diamond, however rough, when they see one.Mark my words: The show is primed for another look. Consider “Legally Blonde,” currently enjoying a critical re-evaluation thanks to a Lucy Moss-directed London revival, and continuing social media affection for its original, bubble gum pink production.Or consider the recent interest in revising the narratives around stars like Britney Spears, women devalued and discarded until a new generation happens to “rediscover” their worth. (Moss’s own “Six,” about an earlier set of royals, the wives of Henry VIII, gets ahead of the curve by directly addressing this schism.)I cannot wait for a group of downtown drag queens to mount a low-budget, high-camp production of “Diana” in 10 years. They’ll know exactly how to play it. Maybe that’s why a local queen bringing de Waal onstage to sing “Underestimated,” the musical’s opening solo, during show tunes night at a Fire Island Pines club — on the evening of the Tony Awards, no less — felt so spectacularly appropriate.Her soaring vocals in the fabulous finale live on through my headphones. While Sondheim’s oeuvre is the reason I sleep well at night, it is sonic moments like these that get me up in the morning. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Diana, the Musical’ to End Broadway Run on Dec. 19

      by

      The royal musical had a bumpy road to Broadway, from a delay caused by the pandemic to a filmed version of the show on Netflix that was widely panned.After surviving the pandemic, which forced its closure after nine preview performances, and a widely panned filmed version for Netflix, “Diana, the Musical” announced on Friday that it would end its Broadway run on Dec. 19. It originally had an open run.“We are extraordinarily proud of the ‘Diana’ company and of the show onstage at the Longacre,” the producers, Beth Williams of Grove Entertainment, Frank Marshall and the Araca Group, said on Friday in a joint statement. “Our heartfelt thanks go out to the cast, crew and everyone involved in creating the show. And to the audiences who have shown their love and support at every performance.”The show, which is about the ill-fated marriage of the Princess of Wales to Prince Charles, began previews on Nov. 2 at the Longacre Theater, and opened on Nov. 17. At the time of its closing, it will have played 33 performances and 16 previews.The reviews for the musical were mostly negative. In his review for The New York Times, Jesse Green wrote, “If you care about Diana as a human being, or dignity as a concept, you will find this treatment of her life both aesthetically and morally mortifying.”The show, which had a pre-Broadway production at La Jolla Playhouse, featured Jeanna de Waal in the title role and Roe Hartrampf as Prince Charles. It was directed by Christopher Ashley, choreographed by Kelly Devine, and written by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan (the Bon Jovi keyboardist), who created the Tony Award-winning musical “Memphis.” More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Diana, the Musical’ Review: Exploiting the People’s Princess

      by

      The tabloid press and the monarchy used the Princess of Wales for their own purposes, and now a new Broadway show does the same.“Was there ever a greater tabloid tale?”Sung by a pack of slithering paparazzi amid an explosion of flashbulbs, so begins “Diana, the Musical,” which seems to exist to answer the question. Digging deep into the celebrity-bio-musical barrel, there to squabble for pre-eminence with pop divas and Jersey boys, it may well win the prize as the tawdriest and least excusable wholesaling of a supposedly true story ever to belt its way to Broadway.I doubt that was the intention behind the show, which opened on Wednesday at the Longacre Theater after somehow surviving two disasters: the pandemic, which knocked it down in March 2020; and a filmed version for Netflix (“the year’s most hysterically awful hate-watch,” wrote The Guardian) that did much the same thing earlier this fall. Still, it’s worth asking, as the poor woman’s corpse is forced to rise again, what its authors could possibly have been thinking.The cynical answer, as always, is money. The Princess of Wales, in her short life and long death, has been dragooned into any number of commercial entertainments, including memoirs by her household staff, thinly sourced biographies, a multiseason story line on “The Crown” and, most recently, the movie “Spencer.” Whether middlebrow or low, these works reshape Diana to their own needs, borrowing her familiar, eventful yet unknowable story to sell mere gossip as relatable real-life tragedy.But at least none of those involved any of the following, as “Diana” counterfactually does: the title character getting jiggy with Mstislav Rostropovich to an electrified version of Bach’s first cello suite; Barbara Cartland, the romance novelist, lasciviously pawing Diana’s lover James Hewitt as he arrives half-naked on a horse; a man with AIDS consenting to have his photo taken with the princess by singing, “I may be unwell, but I’m handsome as hell”; and a sort of boxing match between the rivals for Prince Charles’s affections set to the words: “It’s the thrilla in Manila but with Diana and Camilla!”I wish propriety would allow me to tell you as well about the song in which Diana and her butler, Paul Burrell, choose the low-cut, off-the-shoulder “revenge” dress she wears in response to Charles’s 1994 interview blaming the failure of their marriage on her. Only for turning a common vulgarity into an uncommon one could the number be regarded as clever.Yet these are merely the most extractable of the horrors that “Diana,” as directed by Christopher Ashley, has on display. The real problem is intrinsic, arising from the choice to tell the story in song at all. Musicals, like laws, are often compared to sausages: You don’t want to know what goes into them. In this case, you don’t want to know what comes out, either; if you care about Diana as a human being, or dignity as a concept, you will find this treatment of her life both aesthetically and morally mortifying.Granted, the authors did not make it easy on themselves. In choosing to cover the entire arc of her fame — from 1980 to ’96, with an epilogue about her death tacked on — they probably doomed themselves to the narrative scrawniness that makes the show so twitchy. (“Spencer” limits itself to three days in 1991.) Roughly, and I do mean roughly, Joe DiPietro’s book touches on Diana’s rise from meek kindergarten helper to surprise candidate for what one song calls “the worst job in England,” to fairy-tale bride, to scorned wife, to doting mother, to England’s favorite royal, to unfaithful wretch, to carousing divorcée, to martyrdom and points beyond.De Waal, who sings in most of the musical’s numbers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOnce you add songs into the mix — and Diana (Jeanna de Waal) sings in 17 of them — there’s no time for coherence, let alone subtlety. De Waal is left to embody each new incarnation of the character as quickly and superficially as she swaps William Ivey Long’s trick costumes, which could tell the story better on their own. They are, at any rate, wittier and sparklier than the score; with music by David Bryan of Bon Jovi, and lyrics by Bryan and DiPietro, the songs are cold and crass — and so, not surprisingly, their Diana is, too.This is not just a matter of de Waal’s bravura yet resolutely unthrilling performance, but also of the framing. In her introductory number, looking back on her life from some point presumably after the divorce but before her death, Diana suggests that it was tactically valuable to be “underestimated” — a word that doesn’t scan as a lyric no matter how mercilessly the songwriters flog it. It doesn’t scan as an idea either; rather, it sets up Diana as a kind of English Evita, a schemer who triumphed, which is bizarre on both counts.Indeed, there is something seriously wrong with a Diana story whose most believable and sympathetic character is Camilla Parker Bowles. But other than the degrading “thrilla” scene, Camilla is mercifully underwritten, allowing Erin Davie room to find something human in her that the real Camilla never could.Roe Hartrampf as Prince Charles and Erin Davie as Camilla Parker Bowles, who comes off as the most believable and sympathetic character in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe other two central players have no such room. Roe Hartrampf’s Charles is basically a Prince of Wails, complaining bitterly and at the top of his voice for the entire show; Judy Kaye’s already one-note battleship of a performance as Queen Elizabeth II is further undercut by her popping up occasionally as Cartland — Diana’s step-grandmother — for supposed comic relief.Choices like these suggest that the authors simply did not know what tone to take and so took every one they could think of. Wanting us to engage with the story seriously, they nevertheless ham it up with randy grannies and cheesy catfights. Seeking to cover 16 years in little more than two hours, they condense or flat-out fictionalize with a wink. In this context, it counts as a kind of discretion that the portrait of Burrell as a trusted confidant (and dress wrangler) neglects to mention that he was later prosecuted for stealing from the princess’s estate — a case hastily dropped after the Queen interceded — and, for an encore, wrote a tacky best-selling memoir.Ashley’s staging follows suit, going for grandeur but, in its haste, reaching only the clamminess of farce. (The chilly sets are by David Zinn.) And in Kelly Devine’s bizarrely noncontextual choreography, the ensemble — whether representing palace flunkies, Knightsbridge snobs or worshipful Dianaphiles — performs the same frenzied gymnastics.Musicals are difficult and expensive. No one says they have to be serious, too. “The Cher Show” and “Jersey Boys,” among many others, would have been much better with less drummed-up significance. Nor will an insufficiency of craft and proportion necessarily sully a modest, invented tale like the one told in “Memphis,” the 2010 Tony Award winner from the “Diana” creative team.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.Diana, the MusicalAt the Longacre Theater, Manhattan; thedianamusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Jeanna de Waal Has Already Forgotten About That ‘Diana’ Film

      by

      The British actor Jeanna de Waal is obviously not the first person to play the part of Diana, Princess of Wales, or even the first person to do it this year. “When we started, it was a lot less populated, the pool of people who played her,” said de Waal, who stars as the title character in “Diana, the Musical,” which opens on Wednesday after a long pandemic delay.She is not disconcerted by the Diana-Industrial Complex. “I watch them all, and I can see what they’re doing,” she continued, speaking of the other Dianas in circulation — currently, Emma Corrin in “The Crown” and Kristen Stewart in “Spencer” (there’s also Diana herself, who appears in the CNN documentary series “Diana”). “What I mean is, we all got the same homework, and we all have the same sources, but we all do it differently,” de Waal said. “There are two million ways you could tell her story.”“Diana, the Musical” tells it in song. The tale of Diana’s ill-fated marriage to Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, the production is a frothy, peppy, archly exuberant trip through the familiar byways of this tragic royal relationship, from the couple’s blundering courtship to the recrimination-filled conclusion of their marriage. (There’s a sad coda at the end, foreshadowing Diana’s doomed future.)Roe Hartrampf, center left, as Prince Charles and Jeanna de Waal as Diana in the musical, which is in previews at the Longacre Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt’s been a long road to Broadway, and de Waal has been there for all of it, since the production’s first workshop, at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., back in 2017. The musical opened at La Jolla Playhouse in 2019, moved to Broadway the following year, and shut down after nine previews in March 2020. The set was locked up at the Longacre Theater; the cast and crew scattered.In person, de Waal, 33, doesn’t immediately evoke Diana. For one thing, she dyed her dirty-blond hair dark during lockdown, and has kept it that way since. (She wears a series of increasingly dramatic Diana wigs for the show.) She is also forthright and un-self-conscious in a way that Diana, who always seemed brittle beneath the glitter, never was.De Waal is onstage for almost the whole musical, portraying a sheltered, unworldly young woman whose hidden gifts — charisma, sex appeal, a knack for publicity, an extraordinary common touch — turn her into a global celebrity and a stealth influencer. “Sometimes, though, it’s best,” she sings, “to be underestimated.”“What we have now is a much more juicy and titillating story of what this marriage was,” de Waal said.Josefina Santos for The New York TimesIn taking on the part, de Waal has had to contend not just with all the other dramatic Dianas, but also with legions of opinionated Diana fans who bring their own preconceptions to new depictions of her. Then there is the problem of lowered expectations. In October, a version of the musical, filmed in an empty theater late last year, was released on Netflix. The response, to put it mildly, was very bad.The New York Post called it “the flop of the year.” The Guardian gave it one star and said it was “a Rocky Horror Picture Show of cluelessness and misjudged Judy Garlandification.”On Twitter, mesmerized viewers seemed to be hate-watching the show as they would a terrible camp classic. “I’m so sorry but the Diana musical might be the best worst musical ever written,” one viewer tweeted.The good-natured de Waal responds to questions about this awkward situation with what appears to be constitutional equanimity. (“She’s so centered,” is how the musical’s director, Christopher Ashley, put it.) Even as the mean tweets came in, her direct messages were filled with enthusiastic responses from people who loved the musical, she said. In addition, the broadcast got people talking, she said, and put the production on lists of shows to watch on Broadway.“Look, we didn’t film this for Netflix because we thought it was bad,” she said. “We thought it was fantastic.”Ashley said in an interview that the production had made numerous changes since filming the Netflix special. The theater’s emptiness — the lack of laughter, of applause, of an audience’s ineffable energy — drained the production of its high-octane metabolism, he said. “Having an audience changes what it feels like.” From left, de Waal, Hartrampf and Erin Davie (as Camilla Parker Bowles) in what de Waal calls, “the story of a woman’s revenge.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEarly Broadway audiences appear not to have heard, or not to care, about the unfortunate publicity. At a preview the other night, the theater was filled with Diana-philes eager to bask once more in a story they know so well. They wore “Diana” face masks; they applauded the cunningly staged, lightning-quick royal costume changes; they queued to buy mugs, hoodies and other merchandise. There was applause for iconic outfits; gasps at the appearance of the princess’s love rival, Camilla Parker Bowles; and a standing ovation at the end. In the line for the bathroom, women debated the relative evilness of Charles and Camilla.The producers always promised that the show would make it to Broadway after the pandemic. But they had no idea what that would entail. “I remember the phrase ‘flattening the curve,’” Ashley said, referring to the city’s coronavirus lockdown. “We thought it would be for a few weeks. The possibility that it would be 600 days before we were back in production on Broadway — that was something we didn’t plan for.”As the days without pay stretched on, the cast and crew had to find other sources of income. For de Waal, that came from running Broadway Weekends at Home, a remote version of the musical theater camp that she founded with her sister, Dani, a former actor who works for Google. Hundreds of people signed up during the pandemic, paying a subscription fee to be taught by Broadway and West End performers.Born in Germany and raised in England, De Waal was always obsessed with musical theater. “I became a fanatic,” she said. “For birthdays and Christmases, I would ask for CDs of original cast recordings.” After earning a degree at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, she got a job in the ensemble of, and as an understudy in, “We Will Rock You” on the West End. “It was a baptism of fire,” she said. “I had never done any mic technique work. You know that old thing where singers just sang really loud? You don’t need to do that with a mic. I bought a microphone, and I practiced at home.”In the late aughts, she moved to New York. “I had no agent, no job, and I started doing Times Square open calls,” she said. “I knew no one, and I felt very grown-up and free.” But soon the work was rolling in: parts in “American Idiot,” “Carrie,” the “Wicked” national tour, “Finding Neverland,” “Waitress” and “Kinky Boots,” to name a few.She had a steady string of gigs until her late 20s, when the parts began to dry up. She worked as a caterer and kept going to auditions. She was one of the first people to read for the part of Diana in the workshop; she was hired virtually on the spot.De Waal was one of the first people to read for the part of Diana, and she was hired virtually on the spot.Josefina Santos for The New York Times“Jeanna has been an extraordinary partner in the process,” Ashley said. “She’s really used these couple of years to deepen her feelings about Diana, to make individual moments more and more specific in terms of the emotion of the scene. Even how she holds herself and her mannerisms have gotten more layered.”Back in New York, mid-pandemic, the long, strange delay gave the production the incidental gift of time.“New musicals can make use of the wealth of response you get from that preview period,” Ashley said. “How are the audiences responding? Where do they get quiet? Where do they get restless?” Two new songs were added; changes were made to dozens of pages of the script and lyrics.The story also shifted. Originally it focused on Diana’s disillusionment at the shattering of her happily-ever-after childhood dream. Now it is a sharper, spicier tale about a love triangle that sabotages a marriage. As Diana once said, referring to Camilla: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”“What we have now is a much more juicy and titillating story of what this marriage was, with Charles and Camilla orchestrating the whole thing and continuing to see each other,” de Waal said. “It’s also the story of a woman’s revenge.”De Waal was just a child when her father came into her room one morning in late August 1997 and told her that Diana had been in a serious (and ultimately fatal) car accident. But in studying her for the part, de Waal has come to love and admire the princess — the way she tried to make something of her life, the way she made a difference.“Every single aspect of this show has come from a place of wanting to celebrate this person,” de Waal said. “She did a hell of a lot more than most people. Who knows where her life would have gone?” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      Princess Diana and Michael Jackson Anchor New Biographical Musicals

      by

      In new musicals about Princess Diana, Cary Grant and Michael Jackson actors get a chance to embody icons while spotlighting their individual talents.Just before the pandemic I ambivalently attended a performance of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.” I knew some Tina Turner songs, and I was vaguely aware of her marriage to the abusive Ike Turner. I was only barely acquainted with her global celebrity, and skeptical about the depth a biographical jukebox musical could offer.Though I had qualms about the show — particularly the depictions of violence — I left the theater feeling ebullient. I sneaked out near the end of what turned out to be essentially a postshow concert, but I hung on to the image of Adrienne Warren, as Turner, onstage.What resonated with me was her spectacular star power — what most people would call presence. This is always what draws me in to Broadway productions about iconic figures: how an actor’s impersonation can also be a way to showcase their own star quality.Whether or not the show can live up to the legend, however, is often a different story.With the resurrection of Broadway this fall will come another handful of impersonations to test the hypothesis. Starting Nov. 2, we will see Jeanna de Waal as the Princess of Wales in “Diana,” who, thanks to her style, charisma and, ultimately, tragic death, became a mythic figure.Diana is once again front and center in the cultural conversation, whether in “The Crown”; as a shadow figure in the royal drama between Buckingham Palace and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle; or in the forthcoming biopic “Spencer,” with Kristen Stewart in the title role. (Naomi Watts played the part too, in the 2013 film “Diana.”)Starting Nov. 2, Jeanna de Waal, above with Roe Hartrampf as Prince Charles, will star as the Princess of Wales in “Diana” at the  Longacre Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn the musical’s initial run at La Jolla Playhouse, critics noted how de Waal nailed Diana’s coquettishness, though the character’s ballads (music and lyrics by the Tony Award winners David Bryan and Joe DiPietro) do lean toward an unrestrained earnestness. And despite de Waal’s performance, the show was criticized for zipping so quickly through so many moments of a shortened life that the emotional impact was dulled.Will “Diana” capture the audience’s hearts on Broadway? And what impact will the Netflix recording of the show, which will be available for streaming before the theatrical opening, have on the prospects of the live production? As someone who’s been eating up “The Crown” (especially Emma Corrin’s performance as the princess), I look forward to finding out.Also in November, Lincoln Center Theater’s “Flying Over Sunset” will bring the beloved Hollywood leading man Cary Grant to life in the tap-dancing person of Tony Yazbeck.The musical, with a score by Tom Kitt and Michael Korie, imagines Grant; the playwright and politician Clare Boothe Luce; and the novelist Aldous Huxley sharing an acid trip in 1950s California. (All three were public about experimenting with L.S.D., but their cosmic connection is a product of the writer-director James Lapine’s script.)“He was one of the most famous Hollywood movie stars of all time,” Yazbeck said of Grant in a video preview for the show. “When you get offered this, you have to rise to that level, but also put your own stamp on it.”He seems poised to pull it off, and turning Grant (a child acrobat) into a former tap dancer plays to his strengths. Yazbeck already exudes charm; a well-pressed suit, a classic side sweep and the chance to dance should allow him to do more than imitate the beloved film star.From left, Tony Yazbeck as Cary Grant, Harry Hadden-Paton as Aldous Huxley and Carmen Cusack as Clare Boothe Luce in “Flying Over Sunset.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThen it’s Michael Jackson’s turn.“MJ the Musical,” with direction and choreography by Christopher Wheeldon and a book by Lynn Nottage, begins performances on Dec. 6.Like “Diana” and “Flying Over Sunset,” it was delayed by the pandemic. But this show faced further upheaval when Ephraim Sykes, the Tony-nominated star of “Ain’t Too Proud,” dropped out of the title role.The producers still promise 25 hits from the King of Pop, and you have to expect we’ll see that cherry red “Thriller” jacket and bedazzled glove. But now it’s up to the largely unknown Myles Frost to bring to life that instantly recognizable voice and dance genius.The musical as biography is a challenging form. How do you pair pop hits from an existing catalog to significant events in a life without undercutting the drama or underselling the songs?Michael Jackson’s life, of course, poses its own set of challenges. What will the script make of allegations of abuse on the part of this megastar, which dented his reputation without dulling the affection for his music?And will the qualities that make Myles Frost special be able to shine through when he is playing Michael Jackson? For “MJ” to succeed, the performer’s individual flair shouldn’t be swamped by the icon’s.There is no shortage of screen biopics — two about Aretha Franklin came out this year alone. But they don’t entice me the way the stage equivalents do.Adrienne Warren as Tina Turner in “Tina – The Tina Turner Musical” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe stage feels more upfront about its masquerade. No matter how accurately an actor playing Michael Jackson may moonwalk while singing “Billie Jean,” the very immediacy of your interaction with him in, say, a sold-out show on a Saturday night, forces you to sit in the uncanny valley: This isn’t the Michael you know, of course, but the real-time likeness — and unlikeness — both showcase the celebrity and reveal the talents of the performer.What emerges is a hybrid, an approximation of a person that takes into account the public image — the legend and mythos — reflected through the prism of an actor’s experience, understanding and, finally, ability.Here’s another way to think about it: I accompanied a friend to a locksmith kiosk recently where we were informed in advance that the keys being copied wouldn’t look exactly like the originals.When I consider the impersonators coming this fall, I think of her new set of keys — perfectly imperfect clones. Their look is different, their shape is different, but the mechanics still work. It’s all about the job well done. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      ‘Diana’ Musical Sets Netflix Run — and Broadway Opening Night

      by

      In an unprecedented move, a recording of the show will start streaming in October, while audiences can see it live (if theaters reopen) in December.“Diana,” a new musical about the idolized but ill-fated British princess, managed to get through nine preview performances before Broadway shut down last March.Now, one year, one pandemic, and one Oprah interview later, the show is ready to try again, with a new strategy and a new context.In a first for a Broadway show, a filmed version of the stage production will start streaming before the musical opens. “Diana,” which was shot over a week last September in an audience-less Longacre Theater, will begin streaming on Netflix on Oct. 1, and then two months later, on Dec. 1, will resume previews on Broadway.The musical’s producers announced Tuesday that they intend to open Dec. 16, which is 625 days after its originally scheduled, but pandemic-postponed, opening night. The producers are putting their Broadway tickets on sale now, and counting on the Netflix film, which will have an open-ended run, to boost interest in the stage production.“I think people will see the movie and will say, that’s a show I want to see in person,” said Frank Marshall, a prominent filmmaker who is one of the musical’s lead producers. Another lead producer, the Broadway veteran Beth Williams, acknowledged that the plan involves “a slightly more complicated rollout,” but added “we feel like it’s an incredible opportunity to put ‘Diana’ in front of the global Netflix audience, and then give them an opportunity to see it live.”Broadway, of course, remains closed in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, and producers expect that most full-scale plays and musicals won’t attempt to start performances until after Labor Day. “Diana,” which chronicles the life and death of the Princess of Wales, who was the first wife of Prince Charles, is among the first shows to put tickets on sale and to choose a specific date for a target opening.The scheduling, Marshall said, was a matter of trying to anticipate how the country’s post-pandemic reopening will unfold, and trying to coordinate the two projects to strengthen them both. “We wanted to make sure our marketing plans aligned,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about the fall, for both movies and for Broadway.” (A spokesman for the show declined to say how much Netflix paid for the streaming rights.)The musical, featuring Jeanna de Waal in the title role, is directed by Christopher Ashley and choreographed by Kelly Devine, who previously collaborated on “Come From Away”; it was written by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan (the Bon Jovi keyboardist), who created the Tony Award-winning “Memphis.”Through virtual and in-person work, the show, which had a pre-Broadway production at La Jolla Playhouse, was revised early in the pandemic. The producers said they do not expect further revisions, and expect their cast to remain intact.Diana has remained an object of public fascination in the years since her death in a 1997 car crash. But her story also has a contemporary sequel, as her younger son, Harry, and his wife, Meghan, stepped away from their royal duties, and, in an interview this month with Oprah Winfrey, he said that “my biggest concern was history repeating itself.”The lives of Diana’s children are not the subject of the new show. “You see Diana become a mother, but her children are not in the musical,” Williams said. “We’re telling the story of a complicated marriage, and at the same time we’re telling a coming-of-age story, and we’ve always seen it as a celebration of Princess Diana, whose legacy will live forever.”The producers said they don’t yet know what sort of safety protocols might be required for cast, crew, or ticket holders at the in-person production. Will there even be an opening night party? “There will be a celebration,” Williams said. “It’s too soon to know what that will look like.” More