The Diana Mixtape at HERE at Outernet – review

A quintet of drag queens playing the late Princess Diana, The Greatest Showman’s Bearded Lady (sans facial hair) as Queen Elizabeth II, and a soundtrack including Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, Kylie and Britney? Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore… No, we’re in a cavernous basement under Charing Cross Road and that rumbling you hear could be dance beats, a passing tube train…or the sound of Di turning in her grave.

Created by Christopher D Clegg, whose Tuckshop company purveyed a succession of joyful drag pantos and the crowd-pleasing Death Drop comedy thriller, which featured a revolving door of Drag Race alumna during its multiple West End incarnations, The Diana Mixtape has decent lineage. Conceived as a response to the urban myths surrounding Diana’s fondness for clubbing and gays, it has a kernel of inspiration, sashaying on with rare confidence (the five Dianas are revealed behind a billowing front curtain belting their lungs out like a drag answer to the Six queens), before falling apart in a series of lacklustre vignettes and jokes that are either inaudible or unfunny, or both.

It’s pointless and unfair to apply the same critical criteria to this as to a conventional musical, but The Diana Mixtape feels flabby and misguided even when considered as the extended drag floor show which it basically is. As part of a night in a club, it would last 30 minutes tops before the crowd goes back to dancing, and your enjoyment might depend on how drunk you are. Unfortunately, in this setup – a hybrid of dance floor, cabaret tables and side-on conventional seating with a limited view – it comes across as desperately over-stretched.

The song choices are fun: initially revealing Keala Settle’s cartoonish QE2 belting out the Kelly Rowland/David Guetta floorfiller “Commander” is a hoot, while having all five Dianas end the show with Little Mix’s “Shoutout to My Ex” as a defiant empowerment anthem feels totally right. The absence of genuine wit is a downer though, especially when you know what the five drag queens (Courtney Act, Divina De Campo, Priyanka, Rosé and Kitty Scott-Claus) are individually capable of. They’re all decent vocalists (Rosé and Act have serious ranges and the ever-watchable De Campo fields a charismatic, smoky growl), but when they sing together, it’s mostly without harmonising and sounds like upscale karaoke, an impression the problematic sound design does little to ameliorate.

Drag is renowned for pushing the envelope taste-wise, but an attempt near the end to get sincere about the circumstances of Diana’s death and the half-hearted assertion that she would have loved a show being made about her just feels crass. Having savagely sent up everybody and everything in Diana’s progression from kindergarten teacher to unwilling royal to global icon, it then feels a bit rich to suddenly want to inject a bit of feeling into the jokey proceedings.

Lucinda Lawrence’s hiss-able Camilla, in a wig that looks lovingly crafted out of corrugated iron, pretty much steals the show, and Noel Sullivan delivers a recognisable but appropriately daft sketch of a faithless Charles. The team of young dancers performs Taz Hoesli’s generic but effective choreography with gusto and precision.

The five drag queens swap out the titular role without any particular purpose beyond the need to give each of them a moment in the spotlight, and they’re all excellent given the limits of what they’re required to do. There’s a section where Rosé is ensconced, sleeve by sleeve, skirt then veil, in the trappings of the fabled Emmanuel wedding dress that Diana wore at St Paul’s Cathedral, which demonstrates an authentic theatricality.

Mainly though, this just feels under-rehearsed, poorly thought through and uncertain of who it’s aiming at. It’s not as funny or subversive as it should be, and for a pre-clubbing 90 minutes of poor taste, high-energy camp, you’d be better off at Titanique, or watching the Broadway musical flop Diana on Netflix with a bottle of wine on the go.