B'way Update: 'Diana' Preems on Netflix Before B'way

Jeanna de Waal in Diana: The Musical
Credit: Little Fang

Another COVID-postponed Broadway musical has announced plans for reopening, but with a twist. Diana, the bio-musical about Great Britain's beloved late princess, will now premiere on Netflix before opening on Broadway on May 25, 2021. The show will be filmed in the Longacre Theater next month without an audience and premiere on the streaming service sometime in early 2021 (no specific premiere date has been announced.) Diana began preview performances at the Longacre on March 2 and was to have opened on March 31, but all Broadway theaters closed on March 12. Diana will be the first production to return to Broadway since the closure, if only for one filmed performance. (A current production of Godspell at the Berkshire Theater Group in Pittsfield, Mass., was the first professional regional production to open. The show is playing in an outdoor tent in the theater's parking lot and features socially distanced actors and attendees.) Actors Equity has approved safety procedures for Diana, including initial and recurring testing, isolation protocols for the actors and stage managers, and adjustments to the theater's air-conditioning system to insure proper ventilation.

The Broadway cast will return to their original roles including Jeanna de Waal as Diana, Roe Hartrampf as Prince Charles, Erin Davie as Camilla Parker Bowles and two-time Tony winner Judy Kaye as Queen Elizabeth. Christopher Ashley, artistic director of San Diego's LaJolla Playhouse where the work premiered in 2019, stages Diana. The team behind Memphis, librettist-lyricist Joe DiPietro and composer-lyricist David Bryne, are the authors.  

This will also be the first instance of a Broadway musical premiering on a streaming service before it opens on Broadway. Numerous shows have appeared on TV and streaming after they have opened including the megahit Hamilton which boosted subscriptions for Disney Plus when it was streamed recently. 

In other news, Sing Street, another delayed Broadway production, has announced it will open in the winter of 2021 or in 2022. All of these plans are contingent on a COVID vaccine being widely available, otherwise prospects for attendance would be dim.

Tentative Broadway/Off-Broadway Schedule for 2021-22

March 15--The Minutes (Cort) (previews March 1)
April 13--Plaza Suite (Hudson) (previews March 19)
April 14--American Buffalo (Circle in the Square) (previews March 22)
April 15--MJ (Neil Simon) (previews March 8)
April 22--Take Me Out (Second Stage/Hayes) (previews begin March 22)
May 20--The Music Man (Winter Garden) (previews April 7)

May 25--Diana (Longacre)
Spring 2021--Flying Over Sunset (LCT/Vivian Beaumont)
1776 (Roundabout/American Airlines)
Caroline or Change (Roundabout/Studio 54)
Intimate Apparel (LCT/Mitzi Newhouse)
Letters of Suresh (Second Stage/Kiser)
...what the end will be (Roundabout/Laura Pels)
Exception to the Rule (Roundabout/Steinberg Center)
What to Send Up When It Goes Down (Playwrights Horizons)
Selling Kabul (Playwrights Horizons)
Tambo and Bones (Playwrights Horizons)
Wish You Were Here (Playwrights Horizons)
Fall 2021--Untitled Play by Lynn Nottage (Second Stage/Hayes)
Birthday Candles (Roundabout/American Airlines)
Winter 2021-22--Sing Street; Trouble in Mind (Roundabout/American Airlines)
2021--Our Town
Future--Death of a Salesman; Funny Girl; K-pop the Broadway Musical; The Nanny; The Normal Heart/The Destiny of Me; Smash; Some Like It Hot; Soul Train; The Who's Tommy

Unopened Productions from 2019-20 with no new dates yet
Company
The Lehman Trilogy
Mrs. Doubtfire
Six
How I Learned to Drive

Long-Running Shows and Opened 2019-20 Shows 
Ain't Too Proud
Aladdin
The Book of Mormon
Chicago
Come from Away
Dear Evan Hansen
Girl from the North Country
Hadestown
Hamilton
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Jagged Little Pill
The Lion King
Mean Girls
Moulin Rouge
Phantom of the Opera
Tina: The Tina Turner Musical
To Kill a Mockingbird
West Side Story
Wicked