A conspiracy to bore us rigid
Truth, Lies, Diana (Charing Cross Theatre) Verdict: Self-serving tosh
JON CONWAY, a minor actor who later made a fortune massproducing pantomimes, has booked the C-list Charing Cross Theatre for a month to stage a narcissistic play he’s written about Princess Diana’s death.
It is one of the tackier things I have seen.
Not content with writing it, Mr Conway takes three roles. Among them is the lead part of Ray, who is writing a play about, knock me down with a feather, the death of Princess Diana.
Conspiracy theorist Ray — or should that be Mr Conway? — thinks Diana was assassinated. He is one of those whispery types who can add two and two and come up with six.
He believes ‘dark forces’ (also known as ‘they’) run the country. ‘They’ had it in for Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell. ‘ They’ made sure Diana’s lover, James Hewitt, was rubbished by the Press.
‘They’ might even try to close this play, it is at one point suggested, if Mr Conway shows us a photo of Diana in the back of her smashed Mercedes that sad night in Paris.
‘I’ll probably end up another David Kelly,’ gasps this self- pitying Ray, referring to the scientist whose death sparked the Hutton Inquiry.
Someone tells the intrepid Ray: ‘The media will tear you to pieces if you criticise the Queen. And then there’s MI5.’
Most of this stuff has been trotted out plenty of times in various newspapers. MI5 and that wellknown Nazi assassin Prince Philip (as the play has him) must have been slacking to have permitted such articles to see the light of day!
Sometime Footballers’ Wives actress Kim Tiddy plays Ray’s unfaithful wife . Mauri c e Thorogood comes over all waggly-eyebrowed and sub-Bill Nighy to play a ‘faceless’ embodiment of the British Establishment. And some stiff chump called Fred Perry plays James Hewitt.
Perhaps one day, the Charing Cross Theatre will stage a play in which James Hewitt plays Fred Perry. That might be a lot more fun than this meretricious tosh.