Micky Jo (0:00)

Better than a Guinness. Better than a what? Oh, my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. If you're meeting me for the first time. Hello, my name is Micky Jo and I am obsessed with all things theater. I can't take myself seriously in the viewfinder wearing a tiara. This is absolutely gonna fall off my head. By the way, do you like my revenge blouse? If you couldn't already tell, I am a very serious professional theater critic and pundit based here in the uk. This is already going wrong. Okay, if I keep my head really still, this should be fine. And this is my theatre themed YouTube channel where I discuss all things theater because I am obsessed with all things theater. I can't remember if I told you that already. And today I have been summoned to YouTube because Diana the Musical, the car. Wait, I can't call it a car crash. The disastrous Broadway flop has officially announced that it will be performed in London. Yes, London, England, comma, United Kingdom. Diana is coming here. It's actually happening. So if you know nothing about this whatsoever, I'm going to break it all down for you. I'm going to talk about the original production of Diana the Musical very briefly to give you some context. And I'm going to talk about why this concert version of Diana in London is so, so fascinating. If you enjoyed today's video, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel for many more videos just like these, as well as lots of reviews of the shows that I'm invited to go and see. Maybe I'll review Diana in concert in London. Who knows? So let's talk about Diana the Musical coming to London. Wow, I did not think I'd be saying that sentence this year. Is ridiculous. Okay, so some context on this. This is a musicalization of the sort of rise to extreme prominence and then the untimely early death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Lady Diana Spencer, who was a young woman married into the royal family when she was married off to Prince Charles, who is now King Prince Char. Only he was having an affair behind her back for much of the duration of the relationship, causing her eating disorder to spiral until the two of them had a very public divorce. All of this was watched over very carefully by the then monarch, Queen Elizabeth ii. And also, Barbara Cartland appears in this musical because reasons. Now, for anyone who's not English, I should let you know that this country has a very particular relationship to its monarchy and to the late Lady Diana. And that is to say that not everyone in the country feels the same way. Not everyone feels the same way. There are very different views on the existence of the monarchy, on individuals within the royal family. Some people are very pro, some people are very anti. But broadly, there is a lot of love and reverence for Princess Diana, who, aside from anything else, has also become something of a gay icon. Was it her pioneering compassion for AIDS victims during the AIDS crisis? Was it her high fashion dress sense in defiance of a controlling and conservative husband who was cheating on her? You know, it was probably both. But the British theatre industry would have never hoped to make any kind of a musical version of Diana's story on this kind of a scale. Yes, there have been smaller fringe things. Shout out to the brilliant and wonderfully bizarre theatre maker Linus Karp, who has been touring his solo show, the Untrue and Untold Story. It's also going to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer. If you spend too much time on the Internet and or are queer, you're gonna love it. It's basically Diana's story as told through Twitter memes. But nothing like legitimate or big or commercial was ever going to come out of this because there is just too much reverence for Diana. Even in the more recent seasons of the Crown, where they have begun to depict the more turbulent years of their marriage and of her life. There has been a lot of pushback against this from the British media and from many of the British public. So when Diana the Musical was announced, people over here were not necessarily broadly thrilled about it. But just like we have recently had a musical version of the life of Silvio Berlusconi, the recently dead Italian leader, Diana the Musical was happening in a different country. And I feel like the American perspective on all of this is a little bit different. There is probably also a variety of feelings over there, but it's not their own monarchy and it's not their own leaders. So, I don't know, maybe people can tell me in the comments what the American perspective on Diana and the Royal family is in the United States. In any case, the musical happened, it had an out of town tryout and then it went to Broadway, where it was in previews in March of 2020, which at this point is a month and a year that is burned into everyone's minds because of course, that was the year that the world ended and Broadway shut down. So the show never got to open. They were in previews. I think they started previews on something like the 2nd of March or early in the beginning of the month. And they were one of a few musicals that was about to open. When the Pandemic forced Broadway to close. The show would eventually reopen after the Pandemic, where, due to broadly negative reviews, it only had a very short run, I think just about two months before the production closed. But by this point it had already gained notoriety because during the Pandemic, even though the show couldn't open, they decided to bring the cast into the theatre. And without an audience present, and with social distancing and safety measures in place, they filmed a professional recording, Netflix, a decision which I think has enduring pros and cons. At the time, people thought it was just a bad idea. And when this came out and everyone collectively hate watched it round the globe and it got nominated for Razzie Awards and won the worst picture award at the Razzies, the first time that has ever been won by a musical pro shot, which, you know, that's an achievement. And the recording got devoured by the critics, setting it up for inevitable failure. When the production itself actually opened on Broadway, a lot of people said this was just a terrible idea. Why would they do this? And I watched it and I guess I had an initial similar reaction. But it did not take very long for me to start to change my mind about it just a little bit. Even in those few Diana videos I made on my channel, you can watch when I first react to the cast recording, I'm like, oh, what am I listening to? And then having watched it, I'm like, you know what? I'm starting to not hate it. And in the months that have passed, I have decided that Diana the Musical is right up there with Guilty Pleasures for me. I started re listening to it ironically, I put it on my running playlist and then I started to listen to it unironically. Pretty, pretty girl in a pretty, pretty dress Pretty, pretty girl in a pretty, pretty dress and I'm not here to tell you it's Sondheim or that it's lyrically genius or that it ought to have won any Tony Awards, but I think it is good quality camp fun. And if you haven't watched the Netflix recording, I implore you to. The costume changes, the performances, some of the ridiculousness of the lyrics and the dialogue. It is on occasion, just beautifully bizarre and many parts of it are more than a little bit stupid. But I'm not about to sit here and let you all act like every everything you enjoy on the Internet. Musical theatre wise is always sophisticated and intelligent. Looking at starkid musicals, looking at things like Operation Mincemeat, there are a great many things that have a lot of intelligence about them, but also have some brilliantly wonderful stupid moments. There's some camp shows that we all love. Phantom of the Opera and Diana the Musical exist in a very similar part of my brain, honestly. They are both high camp silliness that I enjoy for their drama and their lavishness and their ridiculousness, honestly. But I've digressed several times away from the point I was initially making. The point is that this show has grown on me and I think it's grown on a great many people, a great many theater fans in the uk specifically, I'm talking about the gay ones, but that's still a decent demographic. In any case, I have now come to the conclusion that recording the show for Netflix will, by the end of all of this, have turned out to be a good thing because it has brought the show into a British consciousness. And without that, this wouldn't be happening. Because this morning it was announced that Diana the Musical would be making its UK premiere at the Eventim Apollo Theatre in a one night only concert in December of this year. And there are so many details to unpack about this. So let's discuss it. First of all, so many people just said this was never going to happen in the uk, it would never get produced over here. It's so critical of the establishment. It doesn't show the Royal Family in a good light. It has Diana on stage and, you know, it's. It has these silly, insincere and campy moments, but I think the British theatre going public can handle that. I don't think everything Royal needs to be only written by the same one writer, Peter Morgan, who has written the Crown, who wrote the audience for the West End stage. I think we can handle depictions of the Royal family that are occasionally a little bit sillier. You have things like Spitting Image happening with. With comedy puppets making fun of the Royal Family. You have the Windsors, this parody TV show that's a comedy version of the Royal family. In fact, as we were coming out of lockdown, the Windsors was produced in a live stage version that depicted Diana very briefly and featured Camilla Parker Bowles singing a villain song about Diana. Fun fact that got cut from the show ultimately, which is a shame because it was hilarious. The point is the naysayers were wrong. It is coming to the uk. Lambert Jackson Productions are bringing it over. They produce a lot of concerts here in the UK and this one is going to be at the Eventim Apollo. That in itself is utterly bizarre. The Eventum Apollo is this huge concert Venue and sister act was produced there last summer. It's going to be going back to the venue, but for the most part, this is not where many musicals or musical concerts are staged. I went to see Ben Platt there when he did his concert tour. There are comedy shows and mostly bands. It's mostly this big gig venue. It is not in the heart of London's West End, it's in Hammersmith. That is a decent journey out on the underground line. From a New York perspective, this wouldn't be quite Brooklyn, I don't think, but it would be considerably downtown. Now, both the location of this venue and its size are slightly strange because it's not like this is a huge, huge show that's going to be so in demand. So what would lead these producers who have previously produced at venues like the London Palladium, to go all the way to Hammersmith? Well, there's a simple. You are very hard pressed to find a theatre in London's West End that does not have some kind of royal patronage. And I haven't been told this officially, but I dare say that they have had to go to the Eventum Apollo in order to avoid any royal connections with the venue, which is a shame because I think this would have been hilarious. At any of the following venues. The Palace, His Majesty's Theatre, the Prince of Wales Theatre. You start to understand the problem we have here because there is also the Duke of York's, there's the Victoria palace, there is the Prince Edward. Like there are so many of these in the West End and even if they don't have an obvious name, so many of them have royal patronage. Theatre Royal Haymarket, Theatre Royal Drury Lane. You could not do Diana at any of these venues. Now, if I was in charge of everything, I think the funniest thing would be for this show to be produced at the other Palace Theatre, where Heathers is currently playing, because it is a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace. But I am controversial like that. So it's going to be at the Aventum Apollo, just to kind of keep it out of the way. Next, I want to talk to you about the casting. Now, they're doing something slightly different with this version because Diana is being split into two different performers. There is a younger Diana who is credited as playing Diana Spencer, and then we have an older Diana who is credited as Diana, Princess of Wales. I want to know where this split is happening within the show. Now, because they're being billed that way, are we to assume they're going to change actresses at the point at which she gets married. Are they going to do it mid spring Song in the kind of dress reveal moment from the Broadway version? I think that would be cool. I think for a show as camp as this is, if you're going to do an actress switch, it has to be at a high camp moment. And I think that wedding dress moment from the recording, that's the one to do it on. They could equally just do an Act 1, Act 2 type of situation, but I have a feeling it's probably going to be earlier. So the performers themselves. Maya Kwanzaa Breed is playing Diana Spencer, the younger Diana, and you may know Meyer as one of the original West End six Queens. She played Cather Parr in the West End cast of six. Since then she's performed as Mimi in the Hope Mills revival of Rent. I recently saw her in Head Over Heels. She has a fantastic voice and I guess this will also make her the first performer of colour to get to play the role of Diana. Diana, Princess of Wales, meanwhile, will be played by West End royalty Kerry Ellis. Kerry was the first British actress to play the role of Elphaba in the UK when she replaced original star Idina Menzel. She's also played Elphaba on Broadway and she's one of the biggest known musical theater names in the West End. She's previously starred in My Fair lady and Les Miserables and her breakout role was Azmeet in the original West End cast of We Will Rock youk. She's done Chess, she's done Wonderland. She recently had this big career comeback in Anything Goes playing Reno Sweeney. But Diana is a huge pivot for her because not really since Fantine do I feel like she's had the chance to play anything with such a level of vulnerability? You could say Elphaba, but Elphaba's vulnerability is a little bit different because it's such a huge beast of a show. I think Diana will allow her to do a lot more closer and subtle acting. I'm quite intrigued about this, but that is not the most striking piece of casting that has been announced for this show because the Queen will be played by Denise Welch. Denise Welch, former actress and now best known for appearing on the television show Loose Women, which is kind of like the UK version of the View. Now, she was an actress and a singer back in the day. She's performed in theater. She was a Sandy back in Greece. She's done an awful lot of panto since she's been a soap actress. And my absolute favorite footnote of this is that she is the mother of Taylor Swift's most recent ex boyfriend, which I guess makes Taylor Swift the Diana in that situation to Denise Welsh's Queen. God, that's worth thinking about. Now, it isn't confirmed whether or not she will be playing the dual roles of the Queen and Barbara Cartland, because that's how it was done in the original production. But given that they've already split Diana into two different tracks, they could very feasibly do the same with Judy Kaye's original track from the Broadway production. It's a big house to sell the eventum. They are going to want as many star names in this as possible to sell as many tickets as possible. So it wouldn't surprise me if they find another star to bring in as Barbara Cartland. Bring in a drag queen. Bring in baga chips from Drag Race uk. I was told privately to expect something very camp with the casting of the Queen and I kind of thought a drag queen was the direction they were going in, but Denise Welch. Honestly an equally camp answer, but so far that is everything we know about Diana in concert in the uk. I'm deliberately not saying West End because this is not a West End venue. Do I think that this could lead to some kind of a West End run? I mean, I really wouldn't bet on it, but I also wouldn't have had this on my bingo card for 2023. So it just goes to show you that I don't know anything. Like I said, it would not be the first show in the West End to treat the monarchy with anything other than an absolute reverence. But Diana is this different subject. I really don't know how UK audiences are going to react to this one. And while on Broadway, it found an absolutely devoted fan base of people who honestly just loved the show and wanted to support it while still being aware that it wasn't the most intelligent thing ever created. For the most part, I don't think there are that many voices that are Pro Diana the Musical in the uk. Maybe they will change their minds when they see this concert. My one reluctance is that concerts like these tend to be very thinly staged. And so much of what made the Diana recording great was all of the costuming and all of the costume reveals and the costume changes. And when you have a concert version that just strips all of that back and we are just focusing on the score, you really notice the material. And that is not necessarily where Diana's greatest strength is. I enjoy the songs, like I said, Guilty Pleasure. I listen to it. Unironically I'm going to be bopping along with a cocktail, but I also have concerns about how it's going to be received. We'll have to wait and see. We will wait until December. In the meantime, I eagerly await more casting who will be Camilla? Who will be Prince Charles? I need to know all of this and I have ideas. If anyone involved wants to contact me privately, we can discuss. Let me know your thoughts about all of this, of course, in the comments section down below. What do you think about Diana the Musical? Are you from the us? Are you from the uk? Are you planning on going to see it? Let me know. Let's. Let's plan a group trip. Let's make that happen. Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you have enjoyed. If you did, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel where I will be discussing more topics just like this or maybe a little bit more serious. There are also the reviews I make about shows. There are vlogs of me going to the theater. Check it all out. Make sure to subscribe. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Micky Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.