Diana: The Musical tries over and over again to give the show gravitas where it ought to just fully commit to whimsy.

| Oct 28, 2021

All of it is wearyingly familiar, and little of it is rendered with more than Lifetime movie-style cliché.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 19, 2021

It's Diana: The Musical and it's two hours of 'whaaaaaat?' and pinching yourself that this is really happening. (After two hours I was black and blue, with the pinching).

| Oct 8, 2021

If there is a silver lining to the over-sung, over-wrought, over-everything Diana: The Musical it is this: musical theatre has finally dished up something that makes the 2019 film version of Cats look like a masterpiece.

| Oct 7, 2021

The cringe-inducing vulgarity of it all goes on and on. Merrily so, which is very odd, because Diana died an early death in a horrific car crash. Where's the fun in that?

| Oct 7, 2021

Shrill and frantic, "Diana" wasn't written by Andrew Lloyd Webber (the composers are David Bryan and Joe DiPietro) but the model seems to be Webber's "Evita."

| Oct 7, 2021

Who on this bloody Earth is this sodding show for? Uncynical Tarot readers? Sassy girl bosses? Ironic hipsters? The swear words give it away: Americans.

| Oct 6, 2021

A wildly crass retelling of a familiar story, a fat patty of pure schlock.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 6, 2021

It's tolerable, I suppose, if you don't have to listen to it. Unfortunately it's a musical so you have to listen to it.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 6, 2021

A shellacked lump of product born solely of cold, money-minded cynicism.

| Oct 5, 2021

Experiencing the musical on screen makes "Diana" feel all the more inadequate, since closeups call for a more nuanced performance than de Waal is prepared to give.

| Oct 4, 2021

Diana: The Musical is rather like the royal family itself these days, expensive and pointless.

| Original Score: D | Oct 2, 2021

Diana: The Musical might make for a fine night out at the theater, but viewed on Netflix, what's billed as a "special presentation" becomes another shiny bauble that ultimately doesn't feel particularly special.

| Oct 2, 2021

It does one of the ickiest things you can do when dealing with the story of a woman who died prematurely, by treating her life as though it was some kind of tragic preordained prophecy.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 2, 2021

Diana: The Musical adds nothing novel or substantial to our understanding of [Princess Diana] as a wife, mother, royal or celebrity.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 1, 2021

Not since the Cats movie have I literally shouted from my seat: "What? What? WHAT?"

| Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 1, 2021