On Stage

...lady named Pam Gems has written something called Piaf A gentleman named Howard Davies has directed it The lady, it seems, has written plays before The gentleman, we are told, has staged many productions in London, where he carries the title of Associate Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company Indeed, the thing called Piaf, now at the Plymouth Theater, was first performed by that famous English troupe Nevertheless, Gems'achievement is managing to have her characters repeat the gerund form of an obscene word—to borrow William Sa-fire's delicate cirmumlocution?00 times in two hours Davies' strength is having people fake fornication on stage when they are not pretending to urinate or to defecate while shouting—with amplifiers—for paper to wipe themselves The raunchy language and erotic images will no doubt attract an audience more at home with New York's Screw magazine than with the usual offerings of London's Royal Shakespeare Company At the same time, though, Piaf claims to be a dramatic presentation of the life of one of the most impressive, most powerful singers of our time Nor can one ignore that it is being taken seriously by many otherwise intelligent people This is depressing, to begin with, because Jane Lapotaire in the title role hams it up outrageously In a real play with a real director she might very well be a good actress She might also be interesting in a musical act of her own For despite the ridiculous lines she has been given here and the grotesque behavior she is instructed to exhibit, her talent glints through But she would have to avoid any attempt to imitate Edith Piaf Her voice and her body are not suited to the task That much is clear from her renderings of some of Piaf s most famous songs, including "L'accordeoniste," "C'estdHam-bourg, a Santiago" and "Non, je ne regretterien, "Her singing of "Lestrois cloches," supported by a chorus of hapless, untrained actors portraying members of the internationally admired Compagnons de la Chanson, it is crude parody Yet, appalling as it is to listen to and look at, the thing called Piaf is infuriating in its treatment of the singer's troubled existence While the years go on taking their heavy toll, we have no way of connecting what is before us with what actually took place If any member of her suggested army of lovers is intended to be guessed at or recognized, for instance, that is impossible, since the men we see do not fit the periods where she is shown with them Moreover, contrary to what Gems' would have us think, Edith Piaf s love life was not marked by a parade of studs selected by a sex-crazy woman for speedy use in bed or elsewhere She was utterly, naively, blushmgly sentimental, and she knew it Her way of introducing a new lover to her friends was to call him "I'homme de ma vie," that is, "the man of my life " The words were followed by a shy smile begging for complicity no less than understanding, she was very much aware of having said the same words, for someone else, several times before Besides, with a few exceptions like the American Eddie Constantine, practically all the men of her life were musicians, writers, singers, and intellectuals not especially given to athletics Perhaps the most important of these was Raymond Asso, who wrote her first great songs Another important one was Michael Emer, a bespectacled songwriter and composer to whom she owed—and we still owe...

...L 'accordeo-niste " A third, Charles Aznavour, cannot be passed off even by Gems as a he-man The playwright half-heartedly concedes, too, that what Edith Piaf saw in Marcel Cerdan was not the boxing champion but a shy, simple, mce human being There were, to be sure, quite a number of disturbing things about Edith Piaf, such as her fondness for alcohol and drugs Various persons, including a relative, have tried to cash in on her popularity and her often strange behavior by concocting sensational stories which, m accordance with the rules of this sordid genre, have consisted of quarter-truths thrown in among a mass of vicious rumors and inventions Pam Gems and Howard Davies have picked up every ounce of this trash and deposited it on the stage of the Plymouth Theatre, leaving very little room for anything else Thus we are supposed to believe that when Piaf toured the UnitedStates with the Compagnons de la Chanson, she was making love with all nine (they were nine, not seven) of them That is not only ridiculous, it is pure—or impure-fantasy Edith Piaf was in love only with one of the group, a gifted, friendly, smiling poet and composer Again, no muscleman, but at the time no one else would have tried to muscle in either, and she did not want anybody else then The playwright also makes much of a simster event that blackened the singer's start but belongs to the field of yellow journalism, not to the theater Edith Piaf never forgot what she owed to Louis Leplee, who discovered her singing in the streets, gave her good professional advice and had her appear in his cabaret (called "Gerny's," not "Cluny") His mysterious murder by burglars in his apartment behind the Arc de Tnomphe was a terrible shock for her To make matters worse, in their desperate effort to track down any lead that might solve the murder of the well-known Parisian personality, the police learned about the little streetsinger he had picked up and arrested her She had absolutely no connection with the crime and the police had to release her after 48 hours But the press (there were then some 30 newspapers in Pans, 20-25 of them yellow) made it a front page story "Former streetsinger involved in murder of nightclub owner ' Now, in the thing called Piaf, the singer is shown on stage with three thugs who are planning the break-in, if not the murder, at Leplee's apartment We see and hear her admitting to a detective, after having received two slaps in the face, that she told the thugs where Leplee's money was hidden All this is supposed to be fact, not fiction or speculation Gems is not about to be inconvenienced, as a reporter, by the fact that the police, even in her play, could not hold Piaf as the confessed accomplice she is made out to be Nor is Gems troubled, as a playwright, by the unlikelihood of the story she invents The Ptal she puts forward would not give away any secret to thugs simply for the asking (that is the story Gems has her tell the police), and she would not be frightened into betraying herself by a face-slapping detective w ? ? hat really reduces Piaf to complete nonsense, however, is the language Although the play was written in English, it seems reasonable to expect the singer's dialogue to approximate or at least reflect her native tongue Yet the obscenities Piaf is supposed to have spoken nonstop all her life do not have any equivalent in French Gutter language in France is quite rich when it comes to insulting someone, but it does not happen to include "fuck" as a favorite epithet Indeed, one never hears the word used at any social level Its use in the plav cannot be attributed to linguistic ignorance either When I asked a British colleague whether a London streetsinger, or streetwalker tor that matter, would be likelv to employ the word repeatedly, his answer was "Only it sliewercwi.ariiigaBntish Ainn uniform Irom World War II So Gem's language—unusual in Great Britain and unknown m France—clearly was intended to shock the theater audience The author also has Lapotaire speak with a cockney accent, which has no counterpart in French Parisian workers do not have a distinctive dialect of their own There is a Parisian intonation that Piaf lapsed into when she let herself go, but this disappeared completely when she wanted it to In the play, Lapotaire switches to very correct French and English when singing, then immediately reverts to the heavy, caricatured cockney Even if she were not supposed to be Edith Piaf, her situation would be unbelievable A streetsinger who did not change her language and her manners could not become a highly successful international performer Just putting together an act with new songs requires great tenacity and discipline No singer behaving like the character Gems has drawn, whatever her name, would have the slightest chance of surviving in the profession A comparison with Peter Shaffer and Peter Hall's A madeus("On Stage,' NL, January 26) is unavoidable But the logical flaw in the character of Mozart does not prevent A madeus from being a play, and as far as its dramatic form is concerned, a great theatrical production The thing called Piaf is nothing Despite a vague chronological approach, it has no structure It is a badly assembled string of unilluminating flashes that cannot be called vignettes, since a "vignette," according to mv dictionary, is a "short, graceful literary sketch " And Howard Davies lmper-turbably employs the old gimmick of having the actors lounge upstage until it is their turn to come forw ard for a quick scene As for the supporting cast, with the exception ot Zoe W ananiaker, w ho w it-ily plays a streetwalker trying to become a dignified housewite, most ot them are pieces ot w ood W orst ot all is a renurkabh expressionless boring blonde w horn the program identifies as "Marlene " Miss Dietrich deserves better So, ol couisl, does her tnend Edith Pial...