Writer: Linus Karp
Directors: Linus Karp and Joseph Martin
25 years after her untimely death, Diana Princess of Wales remains an inimitable figure in British history. As Netflix turns to the later years of her unhappy marriage and ultimate divorce from Charles in the latest series of The Crown, comic actor Linus Karp mines the life of the People’s Princess for rather more laughs.
As its title suggests, this is not a historically accurate retelling of Diana’s life. Rather, it is an hour of bizarre silliness in which Karp – decked out not only in outfits recognisable as Diana’s, but also with his large expressive eyes peeking out from under a blond fringe in an intensely recognisable expression of mock bashfulness – concocts a version of the princess’s life that is just accurate enough to be recognisable, but in every other respect uproariously fictional.
While technically a one-man show, Karp’s Diana is joined on stage by a cardboard cutout of Prince Charles, while the now-Queen Consort also makes her presence felt. Stage manager and co-director Joseph Martin initially voices Camilla offstage as a guttural-voiced demon. When she does appear, it’s as a sex-mad life-sized rag doll puppet, manhandled and flung about the stage by Martin.
Apart from a couple of onscreen roles – Geri Allen with a blisteringly scathing take on The Queen, Zina Badran as God – everyone else is played by members of the audience, selected before the show by Martin but unaware of what lines they must say until they are projected in front of them.
And it is this part of the show which gives us the greatest laughs. The zaniness of Karp’s carefully constructed dialogue, and Martin’s eye for who would do a good job, produces some truly hysterical moments of high-camp comedy.
The show does start to lose its footing once Karp takes Diana’s life into an alternate universe where she does not die in a road tunnel in Paris. Jokes about whether she would become the first cisgender Royal to compete in RuPaul’s Drag Race, and statements about how much of an ally she would be to modern LGBTQI+ people, don’t land anywhere near as well as Karp’s earlier reality-twisting silliness.
But even the slight dips in humour don’t detract from the overall high standard of enjoyment that Karp and Martin provide. This version of Diana’s story may be untrue, but it is very much told – with wit, warmth and with lashings of love.
Continues until 19 November 2022 and then tours
