Diana: The Musical Has to Be Seen To Be Believed.

This viewer rarely watches something that he would class as inexplicably terrible and simultaneously such a bizarre off-the-wall creation and that it has to be seen to be believed. The best recent examples in film terms include Colin Trevorrow’s astoundingly misjudged The Book of Henry. There’s also David Frankel’s unbelievably ill-conceived Collateral Beauty. Housed within this slice of hokum is one of the most insane and potentially incredibly offensive twist endings ever conceived. These kinds of disasters can happen in any area of the arts tend to be confined to a specific subset of social media focused on that area. This month however a pro-shot was released in advance of an upcoming Broadway show. This piece deserves to break out beyond musical theatre fans for all the wrong reasons. Diana: The Musical is it gloriously embarrassing attempt to turn the life of Princess Diana into a hugely misconceived rock opera. Yes, you read that correctly. Bad ideas can still Be executed by passionate creative teams and turned Into something special. Diana The Musical was directed by Christopher Ashley, who very much proved this in his previous work on Come From Away. That said there are bad ideas and then there’s executing sad ideas with such a supreme lack of self-awareness that it makes everything else within the history of filmed entertainment look dignified and respectful. A genuinely insane, generation-defining and career-killing black nark for everyone involved. it’s actively hard to put into words just how simultaneously painful yet gut bustlingly hilarious this production is on almost every level. The writing contains some of the worst lyricism in the history of recorded music. It makes the collective work of Fred Durst and Insane Clown Posse look like classically inclined poets. Search the hashtags on social media and you will find any number of users picking apart the dozens of awful lines. Just one of these would be a project killing embarrassment. The fact the creative team approved lyrics that could be taken as an Ironic parody of bad musical theatre is unthinkable until you’re sitting there watching. The hilarious for all the wrong reasons lyrics are backed up by one of the worst scores ever produced. Like watching the bones of a Pasek and Paul musical be boiled down to the absolute bare minimum. It has the feel of listening to the same duo of tracks on a consistent loop for two solid hours. Musical theatre at its most bankrupt and soulless has never had a better advert for itself.
Diana: The Musical is easily the worst thing regardless of the genre that this reviewer has seen all year. Yet something about its twisted, embarrassingly inapt and incredibly tasteless alchemy means that it will be prime fodder for cult classic status in future. When viewing one can imagine the ironic group viewings and mandatory audience participation events this disaster has coming its way. If anything the existence and release of this pro shot presentation before the official opening signifies its preservation. Keeping this borderline unwatchable yet fascinating train wreck preserved for future viewers to experience. If watches are fans of terrible yet potentially hugely entertaining media they deserve to experience this inexplicable production for themselves. It’s likely to live long in the memory of those that take the journey on this wildly tasteless ride.
0/10.