Piaf at the Vaudeville

Have you ever seen your granny kissing someone? I mean, really, kissing them? No? Probably a relief, isn’t it? And you’d probably be mortified if you did. What if you saw them clucking for smack or being banged against a brick wall? Too much? Well, that’s kind of how I felt watching Piaf, the musical, which is now at the Vaudeville Theatre following its 2008 Donmar Warehouse run.

I should probably say at this point that Edith Piaf is not my grandmother. But my first impression of Piaf was as a sweet little chanteuse – old bird rather than young sparrow – and there is something unsettling about the experience of seeing an old lady’s, shall we say, colourful, history variously exposed through the course of an unremitting hour and a half.

Maybe I’m being squeamish, but there are surely other issues at play here: French joie de vivre and a ballsy, I-don’t-give-a-shit-shove-it-up-your-bollocks attitude (I wonder if there’s a nice French term for that? – ‘nonchalance’ doesn’t quite do it justice), is all very well. But I can’t help thinking there should there be an element of mystique and knowing dignity to a picture of such a life, a sheer veil to keep it alluring, intriguing, but just out of sight.

I can almost hear her spitting, ‘Paf!’, at such a thought, she had no regrets, but it doesn’t always make great theatre – what happened to less is more, à la Hitchcock? Sex is always difficult to portray on stage and watching Piaf having another quickie out there on the cobbled set, another nod to street life, you start to wonder if it is really necessary.

Less than nothing is left to the imagination, artistic license galore there is also much lost, and gained, in translation, as Edith speaks with a thick ‘Franch aksant’, but all those around her speak, in turns, with saaf Landan, hupper-class English, Oirish, and American accents, sometimes real, sometimes affected. Add to this the fact that the total cast numbers about five, many of whom play at least three different roles, including two body-builders and a vertiginous blonde Marlene Dietrich, and it becomes quite difficult to keep track, harder still to engage with any of them. All this flash-biography whirl of sex, drugs, incongruous accents, quick changes and recycled performers takes the production at times to the brink of farce – get sloshed if you go.

However, and most importantly, perhaps, Elena Rogers’s singing is suitably authentic, richly nasal and defiant, if lacking a touch of power, and she demands emotional engagement, while Piaf‘s own music remains a guiding spirit throughout the ropier parts – La Vie on Rose remains a hugely evocative classic. Also, it is an insight to an extraordinary life, one which inspired me to find out more (surely a good thing). I am now looking forward to Amy Winehouse the Musical, complete with real crack.

Piaf is at the Vaudeville Theatre until January 24
404 The Strand
WC2R 0NH

Box office: 0870 890 0511