Prince Charles' wives and auto accidents

[Paul Rigby]

Truth, Lies, Diana, review: 'tricksy'
Dominic Cavendish gives his verdict on the controversial new play about the life and death of Diana, Princess of Wales and her relationship with James Hewitt

By Dominic Cavendish

12:12PM GMT 11 Jan 2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theat...harry.html

After attracting huge amounts of publicity ahead of its opening night thanks to reports that it contains revelations concerning James Hewitt Truth, Lies, Diana, a new playing looking afresh at the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was exposed to the public for the first time on Saturday. Though critics aren't being invited until the middle of next week, I'm afraid my curiosity got the better of me.

Has Jon Conway's attempt to get us all talking again about the events of August 1997 got the news value it has been credited with? Has it got any value in fact?

I'll have to say it straightaway: as a drama, it's pretty patchy. Conway, writer as well as performer here, is playing a fictional alter-ego called Ray who decides to undertake a DIY investigation into Diana's demise, talking to relevant parties, digging through existing material in the hope, increasingly subject to paranoia and fear, of staging a play that opens up the subject to public debate.

The concept often feels too tricksy for its own good, creates a stop-start sense of gears being abruptly shifted and devotes too much of its time and energies to Ray's art-meets-life worries about his wife's fidelity and his own fragile state of mind.

But despite its convoluted quality, there's no question that this is a little David of a play that the Goliath of the establishment would probably rather didn't exist. The biggest headline-grabbing revelation of the night, already reported, involves a scene in which Hewitt (quoted verbatim, we're told) is visited in Marbella, southern Spain. "Are you Prince Harry's father?" he is asked. Hewitt (actor Fred Perry in fitting blazer with apt braying accent) maintains a dignified silence.

But a few minutes later he states "I started my relationship with Diana the year before Harry was born." That's a direct contradiction of what the former Household Cavalry officer has maintained in the past: in 2002 he was reported as saying: "Harry was already walking by the time my relationship with Diana began."

What are we to make of that? As much or as little as we care to there's no explicit suggestion that he is Prince Harry's father, but these few asides will serve to keep the rumour-mill going.

Conway's primary interest, though, lies in piecing together sundry salient details about the events leading up to and after the crash. The picture formed gives an unnerving amount of plausibility to those who maintain that MI6 were involved and that there was a cover-up; given that Conway consulted the forensic and obsessive author John Morgan (also shown on stage), whose researched volumes include "The Assassination of Diana", that's not surprising.

But even if the theories have been aired before, and contested too, putting them on stage does give them a whole new lease of life.
There's an enjoyable aspect to the night - a whole gallery of recognisable faces are brought to life by the cast of nine, including Mohamed Al-Fayed, Piers Morgan and Paul Burrell, along with some of those who held sway at the inquiry and inquest.

There's a symbolic composite figure too of the shadowy "men in grey" who supposedly run things, and even the back of the Queen's head, confiding warnings that some things are best left alone.

I suppose underlying it all is the pathos of what happened to Diana, and a sense that all these years later we can't leave her be. Some will argue that this is a cheaply exploitative show but I think its heart is in the right place, trying to do justice by "the People's Princess".

Until Feb 14. Tickets: 0844 493 0650; charingcrosstheatre.co.uk