Don’t Tell Dad About Diana – Bewley’s Cafe Theatre – Review
by Frank L. 

Dates: April 13th – May 2nd, 2026

Don’t Tell Dad about Diana written and performed by Hannah Power and Conor Murray

Power and Murray are graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, in drama and have furthered their theatrical skills in London at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts.  “Don’t Tell Dad about Diana” premiered in the Edinburgh Fringe and the Dublin Fringe in 2025 and won various awards. Rightly, it is back.

Conor thinks he is a lookalike of the late HRH Diana, Princess of Wales. He and his partner in crime and best friend, Hannah, who makes his costumes and is a stylist, want to win the Alternative Miss Ireland 1997 contest, which is to be held in the gay pub, The George. A win will enable them to fulfil their dreams and go to London. The great wedding dress of the late Princess is reimagined as a slightly remodelled first Holy Communion dress, so the audience is in no doubt from the start that this is an irreverent look at the late princess, but it gives a nod to her as an outsider in the cage in which she lives. Also in the firing line is Conor’s deeply conventional Dublin family, whose father and brother are pillars of society. So Conor is very much a cuckoo in this straight suburban nest situated somewhere on  Griffith Avenue.

Conor and Hannah lead us through the helter-skelter of their lives as they do the necessary hard work of transforming Conor into Diana so that he will be the winning entry in the competition and be crowned alternative Miss Ireland. Along the way, Conor and Hannah target various well-known figures, including  Shirley Temple Bar and Camilla Parker Bowles. Jealousy is a powerful comic trope. On a more particular Irish phenomenon, the creative use of a fake trip and fall “accident” gets a fine airing.

The set consists of a wardrobe whose doors are open, and on which photographs of Diana on the cover of various magazines are displayed. It is a shrine to Diana. During the course of the performance, the wardrobe is rotated through 180 degrees. The back of it then becomes, in tawdry, glittery glamour, the stage of The George pub. It is all magnificently tacky.

Murray is a fearless comic talent who has got “it” and flaunts “it” shamelessly. Power is the perfect foil as she feeds him his lines, but she shows her own comic talents to the full in the shoplifting sequence, where Murray is feeding her the lines. They are a terrific duo.

They are sufficiently perceptive to raise the question of whether their show is in good taste. It is not, but drag and good taste are rarely bosom buddies. The show uses an iconic figure and subversively looks at the surrounding legend through the gaze of two individuals who were at most infants when she died. The result is an hour of laughter and joy – a commodity in short supply in these troubled times.