Princess Diana’s notorious 1995 Panorama interview with Martin Bashir is blamed for today’s morass of fake news and conspiracy theories – which seems a bit harsh – in Jonathan Maitland’s playful but clunky drama. It features an amusing caricature of Diana from Yolanda Kettle, all downcast eyes and gawky Sloane breathiness, like some cautious animatronic bird. Tibu Fortes’s Bashir, meanwhile, is a piranha grin in a bad suit, ready to weaponise his own angry outsider status.
Diana’s butler Paul Burrell is also represented in Michael Fentiman’s staccato production, and Burrell himself was there on press night, along with several BBC types – Maitland is a former Corporation correspondent – having a good old laugh at themselves. I’m not sure anyone outside the gilded media-regal circle it describes will find this mechanical rehash of events, half explanation and half argument, quite so stimulating.
