RIEN TO REGRET!
This is a terrific, impassioned production: not only does Kimberley Sykes’ direction and Michele Meazza’ s movement work keep it watchably, startlingly vigorous, but Sam Kenyon’s musical direction – exciting and witty orchestration, right down to effects of clashes and crashes – uses a cast of nine actor-musicians as well as I’ve ever seen it done. They flow constantly round the stage from the first Parisian street scene onwards, becoming the mass of characters around Edith Piaf’s life with seamless ease: Signe Larsson moves, tall and Nordic-stately, from her double-bass to become Marlene Dietrich or Madeleine the assistant to an ageing star, Tzarina-Nassor on a notable professional debut as Toine – but all of them are remarkable: versatile and sharp, committed in turn to each character they become.
But of course at its centre has to be Piaf herself, and here is perfect casting: Audrey Brisson – whose stage AMELIE beat the film hollow, and also began right here – is of course perfect for Piaf. She is tiny, vivid, honest wide eyes shining beneath a wild mop of black hair, her red-lipped mouth opening wide in wild naive passionate sincerity . In one nice line, when she’s felt her American tour is not going well enough, Dietrich says to her that you can’t have an orgasm every time you go onstage, to which the little firecracker snaps “I can!”.
She plays the crudeness, the sweary street-urchin aspect of our heroine but also the vulnerability, her whole face creasing into terrible despiar; she makes the change over years into a grande-dame carapace without losing any of the old childlike quality. And never, of course, the voice: mouth wide, a shouting emotional tribute to womanhood, desire, loss, ambition and at times brazen contempt, a dirty laugh at the world. Her scenes with Marlene and her last lover, Theo, are touching; her leap from the top of the piano into the arms of Djavan Van de Fliert’s buff boxing Marcel is breathtaking, her sprawl above the keyboard as he thumps out passionate chords intensely erotic.
Pam Gems’ often-reviewed play is episodic, deliberately sketchy, and sometimes ‘spoilers’ are essential: anyone approaching it does well to know the skeleton facts of Edith Piaf’s life. That she busked on the streets of Paris, first with her father a street acrobat then alone, living among prostitutes; that she was discovered by a club owner who promptly got murdered, putting her briefly under suspicion; that she sang for German troops in the war but helped to free French prisoners; that she had many lovers, married twice, promoted Charles Aznavour’s career, and after a bad accident became dependent on drink and drugs. And that she became a legend, surrounded by myths, giving the world almost more than it deserved. Well, OK, I have been a devoted fan ever since I was eleven years old, a temporary French school-girl ice-skating in 1960s Lille to the rhythms of “Je ne Regrette Rien!”, determined to live a life fit for such emotional grandeur. Millions have felt that with me..
Box office watermill.org.uk. to. 17 May
Rating four
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