Both Princess Diana and musician Bob Marley died tragically at the age of 36, and both have been the subject of an endless stream of books and films and plays. They each have another such show this week — one silly, one sincere – at the Fringe Encore Series at SoHo Playhouse, both of them imports from the Edinburgh Fringe.
“Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story” is from the same team, Lucas Karp and Joseph Martin, who brought “Gwyneth Goes Skiing” to New York last year, with much the same approach: As Princess Diana, Karp dons another blonde wig , an ethereal manner, and a runway’s worth of costumes, including a wedding dress with a trail the length of the entire theater. Diana is of course the central figure in a campy chronicle of her life, starting at birth: We see her emerge rom underneath a bedsheet after her mother’s moans, in full coif and couture, pronouncing “It is I, Lady Di, I have been birthed.” About seventy minutes later, both the victim and the perpetrator of a couple of made-up conspiracies, she ends in Heaven, with s. Along the way the show employs a large cast of characters in a shrewd and cost-effective way. Diana’s moaning mother, her father, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen’s corgi are among the members of the audience recruited to read their lines as they are projected onto a screen. Queen Elizabeth, Mother Teresa and God are portrayed by actresses on pre-recorded videos. Prince Charles is a life-sized cardboard cut-out with a brown wig stuck awkwardly on top (voice supplied by Joseph Martin) and Camilla, Charles’s true love and Diana’s rival, is an oversized ragdoll who flopped around monstrously (manipulated by Martin)
Many theatergoers might find hilarity in the mock refinement of this deliberately tasteless play, but I found it easier to laugh at last year’s campy take on the odd trial between Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow and retired optometrist Terry Sanderson over a 2016 skiing accident, not least because, in that story, nobody died.
In “Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed The World,” Duane Forrest explains the roots and meaning of reggae, placing it in historical context and clearing up misconceptions (“Reggae is so much more than just smoking weed .”) while he weaves in the story of Bob Marley and sings sixteen songs — all in about an hour. He is an entertaining singer and guitar player, a charming and enlightening raconteur, and – I say this with affection – a Canadian through and through. Yes, his parents were born Jamaican, but they didn’t meet each other until both had moved to Canada, and Forrest grew up in Toronto. He encourages us to sing along, and poses questions to the audience to test our knowledge, a gentle teacher. He tells us he got in touch with his roots, writing his first reggae song – about cliffs that overlook Lake Ontario. If I am not sure I completely caught on to how reggae changed the world, it’s clear how it changed Duane Forrest’s world.
“My last name’s Forrest, but that’s not my last name. That’s the last name of my great-grandparents’ slave master. I don’t know my last name.”
Forrest closes with Marley’s Redemption Song, introducing it in a way that succinctly sums up reggae – and Forrest’s own journey, and his show. “It’s all the trauma, the pain and the loss of the past, but also the resilience, the hopes and the dreams of the future! All in 3 and a 1/2 minutes!”
“Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed The World” is playing through January 8, and “Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story” is playing through January 9, at the SoHo playhouse as part of the International Fringe Encore Series.
