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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
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Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
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I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
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Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Dir: Jamie Lloyd, Nigel Lilley (musical director).
Cast: Elena Roger, Shane Attwooll, Phillip Browne, Lorraine Bruce, Luke Evans, Michael Hadley, Katherine Kingsley, Steve John Shepherd
Description: A re-working of Pam Gems' play featuring a vivid exploration of the rise and fall of the Little Sparrow. With Elena Roger in the title role. Directed by Jamie Lloyd.
Trains: Tube: Covent Garden 
Phone: 0870060 6624
Website: www.donmarwarehouse.com
Staggering success: Elena Roger in Pam Gems's raw, unromantic portrayal of Edith Piaf
Transformed: Elena Roger after the show
In her tiny black dress with her tiny blackened lungs, Edith Piaf stands, clawing at her stomach for the music to come. But she is wheezing and weeping. The Voice - the one that sounds like it has swallowed razor-blades - isn't there. An anonymous horde presses forward to pick her up and strip off her clothes one by one - and Piaf begins.
In these first moments, it seems as if Pam Gems's play will be yet another version of that old and ever-new story: the star who overdosed on herself. We all know the cliché: the talent and the sickness feed off each other, lifting the heroine up while tearing her down. Think the myth of Judy Garland; think the myth of Amy Winehouse. But it soon becomes clear this production is more raw, and more real, than these honeyed lies.
This Edith Piaf is on a 47-year trajectory from gutter to gutter, via the great concert halls of the world. Born on the streets, she staggered into success and soon surrounded herself with a coterie of addicts and beautiful young men who feasted on her fame.
In Jamie Lloyd's bare, low-tech production - on a black, brick stage - the romance is stripped away as surely as her clothes: she is an addict with great lungs.
There is no redemption in this pain; it doesn't buy the lie. We watch her vomit and stab needles into her arm and morph into a prematurely-old, balding gargoyle. This is a guttural and smelly and authentic show: it is as far from jazz-handing feel-goodery as musicals get. The only things reaching up for the sky are her veins.
Before I saw this production, Elena Roger seemed odd casting as Piaf: an Argentinian as the most iconic Frenchwoman of the 20th century? She was great as Evita - but this? From her first moments at the microphone, every doubt evaporates. She has folded herself into Edith Piaf so perfectly you cannot see the join. She might be smaller than ET but her voice is like her subject's: vast and bitter and irresistible. For nearly two hours, she is Piaf. She crashes through life with only The Voice as armour - a singing car crash, skidding on booze and opiates. As Edith destroys herself, Roger's body shrivels, and her voice grows.
Piaf is structured so each scene bleeds into the next; there is little sustained dialogue-in this opium-haze. The audience has to pull the story together from the jagged shards of narrative that jut between Piaf 's songs: the dead baby, the pimping, the lost love of her life. The ensemble melt in and out of a range of roles, so Piaf 's ego - at once monstrous and broken - is the only fixed point we have. "I'm a draw," she says, "They come to see if I can stay on my feet."
When Rogers ends the show inevitably singing Je Ne Regrette Rien with pitch-perfect pain, it seems less like an act of defiance - and more like a grasping, ironic anthem to denial.
Until 20 September. Box office 0870 060 6624, www. donmarwarehouse.com
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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As far as I'm concerned the show and dialogue were irrelevant. Elana's singing was quite stunning, she brought Piaf to life, absolutely wonderful.
- Rex Ide, Ipswich England
It is a reworked version of the original that runs 95 minutes with no interval and boy does it feel madly rushed. The first 20 minutes they do about 3 scenes a minute with everyone rushing round like headless chickens accompanied by much manic blasting sound effects.
The introduction of various well known figures that she knew almost seemed comical and clumsy in its handling but its main crime is the confusion caused by trying to cover many years of life experience in so many lightening fast short scenes (oh who are you, be my husband, oh no you are dead, who are you? my new lover, oh you have left me, oh no my friend is dead, oh I am a big star now, get me drugs.....)
I wonder if the original was a much longer show?? I know there is apparently some new writing here too to freshen up the play based on the additional information we have found out about Piaf.
Once the show settles down around the time of the meeting with the boxer who was the love of her life it finally starts to become emotionally rewarding. Elana is just stunning as Piaf and I imagine she will get rave reviews, as may the show although it is will not be completely deserved in my opinion.
- Lee Wilson, London, UK
