Nice Wark! Kirsty backs son’s Diana play
NEWSNIGHT presenter Kirsty Wark is backing plans for her son to put on a play about Princess Diana at the Edinburgh Festival.
James Clements, 23, has written a production called In Her Own Words: The Diana Tapes which he hopes to perform at the Fringe festival in August.
The play is about the secret recordings Diana made, which formed the basis of Andrew Morton’s controversial book on her and led to the breakdown of her marriage to Princes Charles.
Mr Clements, the son of Miss Wark and her TV executive husband Alan Clements, studied at New York University and formed a theatre company with friends in the US. He has set up a fundraising campaign online aimed at raising £3,500 to travel to Edinburgh and put on the show. Miss Wark, 61, has used her Twitter page to urge people to donate to the project, which her son will also act in.
She tweeted: ‘Check out my son’s fundraiser for his upcoming @edfringe show about Princess Diana #fond mother.’
A summary of the play on Mr Clements’s fundraising page describes it as a ‘tense thriller’, which ‘presents the true story of one of the greatest media scandals in British history’.
It continues: ‘The writer, James Clements, is a theatre artist who lives between New York and Glasgow, and this production will marry the strong creative and artistic heritage of both locations.’
The play will be performed at theSpaceUK venue on Edinburgh’s Niddry Street from August 22 to 27.
Royal biographer Mr Morton wrote his international bestseller Diana: Her True Story in 1992.
It was based on seven hours of taped responses to his questions, in which the Princess talks openly of her bulimia battle and her heartache over her husband’s long affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.
Mr Clements is no stranger to the Fringe, having made his debut three years ago in a play called Dear Friend.