There’s a story that has been floating around for a while — that may or may not be fully true — and it involves Princess Diana sneaking out of Kensington Palace at night dressed as a man, accompanying her friend Freddie Mercury on a trip out to a gay bar, and getting away with it. And come on, you want that story to be real in such a major way that whether or not it actually happened is kind of irrelevant, right? Right.
That’s why it’s been turned into a stage musical. The brand new baby production, known as Royal Vauxhall, from creator Desmond O’Connor, is still in the nightclub performance stage, but it’s already leaps ahead of the current jukebox musical trend, thanks to original songs and a scrappy sense of purpose, one where obscure but relevant gay cultural history is brought to light (or perhaps invented wholesale).
Nobody knows where this is going, but it all feels very Hedwig-esque, possibly moving on to a huge, appreciative audience when a visionary investor comes aboard. Like they always say, “print the legend,” it’s just more fun.
— Romeo San Vicente
