It's a dreadful, dreadful musical, as if it had been written by people who'd never heard of dramatic structure or of the need to vary the meter and rhyming scheme of a lyric. It's offensively stupid; one of those shows where when seeing the final product, knowing that so many skilled and professional people have played a part in the production process, I can't feel nothing but amazement that they ever let it get this far. All that money and time and talent, and it's still unsalvageable insipid trash. It's not even fun.
And had the show started previews a few weeks earlier than it did, it would have opened to the critics before the pandemic, would have been deservedly eviscerated and closed soon after at a total loss. Netflix would never have been interested, and Diana the Musical would have become nothing more than a historical curiosity and a poster on the wall of Joe Allen's.
However, due the pandemic they had a full production ready to go without word yet having got out in the press that it was abysmal. As such, it seemed like a logical The Crown brand extension for Netflix, and it'll be there for the producers of the musical to generate a small but consistent income in perpetuity. It's a savvy business move on their part, if nothing else as the stage version will never recover from the double whammy of scathing reviews film critics now and the inevitable similarly dismissive ones from theatre critics in a few weeks. It'll be closed by Christmas, but on Netflix forever.
Joe. |
