Twenty-eight years after Princess Diana’s death brought the world to a standstill, director Christopher D. Clegg has transformed her life into The Diana Mixtape. With a cast full of big names in the drag artist world and a script packed with pop culture references, this fever dream jukebox musical not only tells the story of The People’s Princess but also gives her the fabulous redemption arc she deserves.
Hardened royalists seeking a faithful retelling of the Charles and Diana story will not find one in The Diana Mixtape. In fact, the biographical story naturally takes a backseat to five all-star drag queens performing a setlist of pop hits from the last three decades. While some of the songs come across as shoehorned in due to their popularity, others are real highlights—such as turning Lady Diana’s ‘Revenge Dress’ moment into an empowering ensemble number set to Beyoncé’s ‘Freakum Dress’.
Between the bombastic numbers, context on Lady Diana’s life is fed to the audience through very brief comedic narration. The big group performances are mostly a blast, but Lucinda Lawrence and Keala Settle steal the show as a Disney Villainesque version of Camilla Parker Bowles and a sassy re-imagining of Queen Elizabeth II respectively. Their energy and vocal skills bring a spark that is occasionally lacking, especially during musical numbers that don’t quite land or ones that could have been more creatively imagined.
These blind spots in creativity hold the show back as a whole. The premise is enormous, and with a cast full of RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni, The Diana Mixtape has the potential to be dazzling. Yet it felt like the show sidestepped opportunities to be bold in exchange for wider likability.
As a result, most of the show’s humour relies on being clued into both Diana’s life story as well as contemporary pop culture. Most notably, the ‘Nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday’ gag is so current that anyone who has taken their eyes off the latest viral memes over the past fortnight would be left scratching their head. Somehow, it works—seemingly because the target audience for a drag show about an iconic royal from the Nineties just so happens to be millennial and Gen Z digital natives for whom internet references are a second language.
Clegg must have kept this in mind when he was weaving Lady Diana’s story between pop hits from Britney, Kylie and Nicole Scherzinger. By combining the two, The Diana Mixtape becomes a high-speed journey through late Nineties and millennial nostalgia. It doesn’t dig deep into the Princess’ saga, but there are plenty of biographies and documentaries that have that covered. What The Diana Mixtape offers is a fun, flamboyant party, and as the on-stage Dianas say: “I think Princess Diana would have loved a drag show about her.”
