She died in 1963 but, more than 100 years since her birth, Edith Piaf lives on the London stage. Piaf! The Show is not to be confused with the theatrical production that ran at two West End theatres recently. This event is a tribute concert – fronted by singer Anne Carrere – that takes us from rags to riches, starting with Piaf busking for pennies in Montmartre bars and ending with her headlining at Carnegie Hall, New York.
The songs associated with Piaf, by musicians and lyricists such as Michel Emer and Raymond Asso, all work as melodramatic mini soap-operas in French and, for the first half of the show, these qualities are often lost on an anglophone audience, despite clumsy attempts at theatricality and rather literal back projections.
Only in the second half does the show come to life. To match Piaf’s gentrification, the backing band change from Dexys-style flat-caps, neckerchiefs and waistcoats into suits and dicky-bows. Carrere’s voice starts to replicate Piaf’s gurgling, growling consonants and hits those thrilling, trilling higher registers. She plays Piaf as a man-hungry vamp, wandering around the audience, grabbing men from their seats to dance, even inviting one woman to her feet only to leap into her vacant chair to cuddle up with the husband.
The band have fun: the button accordionist throwing in audacious substitute chords, the pianist weaving in snippets of Chopin and Beethoven, the drummer slipping into jazz waltz rhythms. And instead of going for bombast, the set-piece Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien is played as a low-key miniature, focusing on Carrere’s soaring voice, which makes a devastatingly effective closer.
