The Diana Tapes provides an intimate picture of her attempt to tell her own story through a book. It is a respectful yet critical approach of telling a very personal tale. While it is a dark piece of theatre, it doesn’t forget about humour and lightens the mood with well-placed jokes.
Even though the story is very straight forward and flows nicely, the audience does to some extent need background knowledge to understand everything happening onstage. Therefore, it would be advisable to read up on Diana if one is not too familiar with the topic.
Jordan Yanco does an amazing job at coaching the cast on their characters’ dialects. Every single actor manages to give the audience an immediate understanding of their persona’s class and geographical background. Ana Cristina Schuler gives an especially accurate impression of Diana. She offers an insight of the princesses’ character off camera that seems to be as close as it could get to her real persona.
The staging was quite minimal, with little change of set. Overall, the props were as black as the stage, complementing the atmosphere of the play. However, it might have given the audience more understanding of a scene’s setting if there had been more changes. As the play itself was very naturalistic, the staging felt too abstract to match. The only real change occurred in the last scene when the stage was changed into a dressing room.
Nevertheless, the performance as a whole was engaging and enjoyable. Definitely worth a visit to the theatre!