Thirty years after its premiere, and now trimmed to 90 minutes, Pam Gems' play remains a rickety star vehicle. What matters, essentially, is the calibre of the star. First it was Jane Lapotaire and then Elaine Page. Now the role is taken by the diminutive Argentinian Elena Roger, who outdoes her overpraised Evita to become, astonishingly, the living embodiment of Piaf.
Gems' play itself is a sketchy affair. It whisks us through Piaf's origins as a street singer (and walker) in 1930s Belleville, and shows her shooting rapidly to stardom. But, while Gems suggests that Piaf retained her gutsy working-class spirit, she never explains what it was that attracted the loyalty of friends like Cocteau and Dietrich.
What Roger brings to the role, however, is a furious energy and the orphaned solitude of stardom. Even if Gems' Piaf does not change much, Roger invests the role with her own physical dynamic. Her trump card is that she sings as well as she acts. Each number is delivered with the right dramatic gesture so that, in L'Accordéoniste, her splayed fingers simulate the expansive gestures of the instrument-player. Later, in Bravo Pour le Clown, Roger rocks from side to side as if being pulled by invisible strings. Even more sensationally, she brings the number to a climax by careering round the stage and charging at the audience like a wild animal.
It is a tremendous performance, buttressed by Jamie Lloyd's production, which punctuates Gems' snapshot scenes with the exaggerated click of a camera shutter. Phillip Browne as Piaf's pugilist lover and Katherine Kingsley as a sanely professional Marlene make their mark in thinly written supporting roles. There was an automatic standing ovation, but I felt it was for Roger's triumphant performance rather than for the play.
