USA: A MUSICAL STAGE PLAY OF THE LIFE OF PRINCESS DIANA BEGINS REHERSALS FOR AN OFF-BROADWAY PRODUCTION

Record ID: 387709

  • Title: USA: A MUSICAL STAGE PLAY OF THE LIFE OF PRINCESS DIANA BEGINS REHERSALS FOR AN OFF-BROADWAY PRODUCTION
  • Date: 26th August 1998
  • Summary: WALSH ON STAGE PROPOSING TO MUNGER
  • Embargoed: 10th September 1998 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Entertainment,Royalty
  • Reuters ID: LVAE5OBJ3IOCJX04YASLJTYA99N4
  • Story Text: With less than five days before the anniversary of Princess Diana's death in Paris, a musical stage play has begun rehearsals for an off-Broadway production of her life, to open in October.
    An unknown 23-year-old has been chosen over many experienced stage actresses for the role of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a musical about her life and tragic death last year.
    Kendra Munger, in an interview Wednesday (August 26) with Reuters Television, said she was sensitive and a little shy, just like the woman she will portray in the show "Queen of Hearts", which opens October 1 in a small off-Broadway theatre.
    "I think it's a very loving portrait of her.It portrays her as a very real person who was in some extraordinarily difficult situations and had a real, soap opera of a life.
    In her short life she lived what for other people would take a hundred life times to live" Munger added who had her brown hair cut short and dyed blonde for the part.
    Her Prince Charles, James Walsh thinks his character is like most people, not perfect "I think he's a work in progress.There is something about him that I would like to portray, that he didn't realise just how wonderful the girl was that he got involved with" he told Reuters Television "but I think by the end of this show if she came back today and they met I think they'd have a very different kind of raport than they did then" Walsh added.
    The show is billed as the first fully-fledged musical about Diana and hundreds of actresses, many of them experienced, auditioned for the part.
    Claudia Perry who wrote the lyrics and music for Queen of Hearts developed Munger's voice throughout the production to mirror Diana's development."In the beginning of the play we're keeping her a light soprano.She's young, a youthful voice a light soprano and as she develops she becomes stronger and she has more of a chest voice, more guts to her" Perry said.
    Writer and director Stephen Stahl said he chose Munger who is from Connecticut, because of her "fabulous"voice and "great" acting ability.
    Stahl told Reuters Television that he wanted to take the musical to Broadway, but that was not why he penned the musical.
    "I read a lot, I studied a lot, I got as much information as I could and what I discovered about Diana was that we all have the same feelings, she might have been a princess, she might have been royalty, she might have been female, but I know that the way Diana spoke, she felt the way I did.She spoke for me, so I put my emotional context into what I thought Diana would feel." Stahl said during a break in rehearsals Munger has played numerous musical-comedy roles in regional and dinner theatres in New York and Florida but this is her biggest part to date.
    A staged reading of the show will be held at the Grove Street Playhouse on August 31st, the anniversary of Diana's death.
    The musical portrays Diana as very much in love with Dodi Fayed, who was also killed along with the driver in the high-speed crash in Paris.
    The cast also includes characters for Prince Charles and Prince William and Prince Harry - sons of Charles and Diana - Diana's brother Earl Spencer and the "other woman" in Prince Charles' life, Camilla Parker Bowles.
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