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Diana, Princess of Wales, placed the handheld microphone back into its stand, her rendition of the Petula Clark classic “My Love” complete, and waited for the applause from the packed cabaret to die down. There was a fellow in the front row with a nice face ruined by the toothpick that protruded from his mouth like a fishbone, and a beautiful woman with a silver mane that fell halfway down her back. There was the usual coterie of grandparents from both sides of the pond, because let’s not forget: anyone who watched Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles was likely well above fifty. Many were well above sixty.
This was my second show, and the crowd was always drunker.
I had called Congresswoman Erika Schweiker twice, not leaving a message either time. She hadn’t called back, but even if she hadn’t recognized the name “Crissy Dowling” on her missed calls list, by now she or one of her aides had googled me and figured out who I was—and confirmed that I was an ex-lover of her competition for the Senate seat that she craved. And so I had scanned the audience members I could see from the stage to see if she was in the house. She wasn’t.
And since I hadn’t heard from her, there was no reason not to retreat to my dressing room as usual, especially because I had spotted Yevgeny Orlov seated along the stage-right wall. He was beaming. His presence in the audience—combined with the specter of my sister once more dropping into my life like a bomb, and whatever the hell loomed for the BP and Artie Morley—was making it a wee bit harder than usual to sink into my role. Most nights, it was all muscle memory. Still, I’m a pro (three words I love to say in Las Vegas), and the show was moving along swimmingly.
As even the most enthusiastic people in the audience were finally dropping their hands back into their laps, I gathered myself and said, my voice a whisper that was amplified by the small mic in my hair, “Yes. My love was softer than a sigh. Was that the problem? There were three of us in the marriage…and not in a fun way.”
The room laughed, some of it uncomfortable, as usual. I knew the actual Diana quote and always some members of the audience did, too. Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.
“And my voice, then, really was softer than a sigh. I say that metaphorically. Because the prince and I had our share of shouting matches. But here is the reality: you cannot win an argument with a prince, even if you are a princess yourself, if the prince is the heir to the throne.” I then segued into the story from 1983 when a photographer caught Diana sobbing in front of the Sydney Opera House while Charles—if he noticed her crying, which I considered unlikely—was looking elsewhere. There was a tremendous crowd on that Australian tour, as there was everywhere the prince and princess went in 1983, and I told the audience (transitioning from my winsome Diana voice to my heartbroken one) that I liked to believe that if Ken Lennox, the photographer, had not captured the moment, the nearest onlookers might have supposed she was weeping with joy. “Oh, but other than when I was with one or both of my two boys, there were no moments when I was weeping with joy.”
I hadn’t seen my robber-baron friend since he had left my suite that morning until I’d spotted him in the audience. When I’d googled him, there were profiles that suggested an almost Jay Gatsby–like ascension: poor little immigrant from the sunken ship that once was the Soviet Union washes ashore in Brighton Beach and, as an adult, becomes an important director at GEI, a company that, good Lord, really did have a portfolio of companies that included banks and power plants.
My second show ended at eleven thirty. I only had to keep it together another half hour. So, as usual, I segued into the story about confronting Camilla Parker Bowles at a dinner party in the late 1980s, and froze as the lights came up stage left, and there was Nigel Ferguson as Charles—old Charles, his hair beneath a flesh-colored skullcap and a thin white-haired wig upon that—saying, “Do you know what my mother’s first reaction was when she saw her grandson, William, in the hospital? ‘Thank goodness he hasn’t got ears like his father.’ ” As the monologue continued, the audience watched a little breathlessly, wondering whether this would be a moment of devastation or light humor.
I wrote it as light humor, but Nigel always added just the right touch of wistfulness, because, of course, there’s nothing about Princess Diana’s story that doesn’t reek of melancholy, which might be why it is perfect for Las Vegas—a place which, I can tell you firsthand, is secretly the most melancholic place on earth.
* * *
While some tribute shows are designed to have the audience dancing in the aisles, others dig deeper. I hope mine does. They touch a chord of orphic remembrance and remind us who we once were and, sometimes, where we once were: emotionally and literally.
Among the best examples of that might be the show originated by the pair here in Vegas who re-created the Carpenters. I’d seen the show three times, which was two more times than I’d seen any of my other tribute competitors. (I had a reputation among the tribute crowd that I didn’t play well in the sandbox—that I wouldn’t deign to mingle with the other entertainers. Perhaps. I preferred to view myself as mysterious, not standoffish.) It wasn’t merely that the duo’s impersonation was impeccable or that “Karen” really could sing or that “Richard” was a spectacular pianist and musician. It wasn’t even how much I discovered I loved the Carpenters’ music, even though they were recording well before my time.
It was the reaction of the audience. Each time I went, I watched the crowd, and I listened to what they were whispering to each other between songs or before and after the show. Every Carpenters song was a piercing remembrance for them. When the woman who channeled Karen was singing “We’ve Only Just Begun,” there were people nodding because the ballad was sung by someone at their wedding, and each note catapulted them back to the day they were married. “Goodbye to Love” reminded them of their first heartbreak. “Superstar,” a mournful tale of a groupie and the rock star who had clearly used and abused her and now was never coming back, likely resurrected a different recollection for every member of the audience, but every one of those memories was somewhere on the spectrum between outright betrayal and mere unrequited love.
I strove for that with Diana, and the music mattered. I chose my Petula Clark and Dusty Springfield and one key song from Bonnie Tyler with care: it wasn’t just the songs, however, or their words; it was what the songs meant to my crowd. The combination of Diana’s story and the music I’d added was a time machine. And while everyone’s destination was different, they arrived there with, as we like to say, “all the feels.”
* * *
Yevgeny looked around my dressing room. I was leaning against my vanity, sipping my postshow herbal tea. He could see himself in the mirror, and he could see the photos that ringed the mirror, most of them hanging on for dear life those days by yellowing strands of Scotch tape. All but one were of Diana alone or the princess with Charles or the queen or her children. The one that was not of Lady Di was an ancient shot of my mother, my stepfather, and Betsy and me sitting on the stone wall in our backyard in Vermont.
“It was fantastic,” Yevgeny was saying to me. “Whole show. I loved it. The videos were really moving. And the guy playing Charles? It seemed to me, he was spot-on.”
I nodded. The video montages had grown more elaborate every year, and now my choreography occasionally mimicked the real Diana, who would be projected behind me. But the parts that still caused me to shed real tears onstage were when I would turn and watch the videos of William and Harry as boys, no shadow Diana on the wall, and talk about how much joy they brought into my life. I didn’t suppose I’d ever have children. Diana was twenty-one years old when she had William. She was, in some ways, still a child herself, and the idea that she was willing to take that on when she did was as laudable as it was pitiable. And yet, from the beginning, she was a lioness of a mum: the nursery was a place of unexpected sanctity for her, which certainly riled some of the royals.
“And you wrote it?”
“Every word.”
“It wasn’t what I expected,” he went on. “I expected it to be sillier.”
“There are moments that are pretty damn silly.”
“I expected it to be more like a tribute show.”
“Sort of like those bands that re-create the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?”
“Exactly,” he said. “But it was more like when Bryan Cranston did Lyndon Johnson or Hal Holbrook did Mark Twain.”
“You saw them?”
“I saw Cranston as Johnson. Live. I’ve seen videos of Hal Holbrook as Twain.”
“Your life fascinates me. Poor boy from Volgograd makes good. You went to George Mason University, I saw.”
“You did your homework. I liked Virginia.”
