Life and times of singing star

A NEW production at the Watermill looks at the extraordinary life of the 20th century chanteuse best known for singing the stirring anthem Non, je ne regrette rien.

Piaf explores how Édith Piaf was born into poverty in Paris in December 1915, yet ascended to stardom despite the many struggles she faced, particularly in her love life and with her health. The play was written by Pam Gems in 1978.

Known as “The Little Sparrow”, as she was less than 5ft tall and weighed around six and a half stone, Piaf also sang songs including Hymne A L’Amour and La Vie en rose.

Audrey Brisson plays Piaf and Djavan van de Fliert plays Marcel Cerdan, said to be the love of her life, in the show, which is filled with music.

Djavan, 26, who lives in West London but grew up in Holland, Belgium, Peru and Mexico, says: “I think the music of Piaf, how she performed and how much heart she gave to each and every performance is part of the reason she is so famous.

“Her songs are so complicated. Our musical director, Sam Kenyon, was stressing the complexity of what her writers and her orchestras were able to achieve in that time, things that even to today’s standards hold up and are absolutely beautiful and brilliant.

“There’s 10 of us in this actor-musician show and there’s nine of us playing instruments and that will make Piaf’s music come to life.”

Djavan, who has also appeared in Les Misérables, Frozen the Musical and My Fair Lady and is also playing Yves, has brushed up on his keyboard skills for the part.

“It’s my first time at the Watermill, it has brought a lot of challenges because it’s also my first time doing an actor muso show.

“I had always played the piano and passed all the grades when I was younger, but I had trained as a musical theatre actor and performer, not as an actor-musician so it was quite a daunting first couple of weeks to try to navigate that.

“I play the piano a couple of times throughout the show but in true actor-muso style, they have really tried to not have one person sit at the piano for the whole piece.

“As Marcel, there is quite an intimate scene in the first act. I play the piano for one of the special bits called Mon Dieu, which is a very intimate scene between Piaf and me and without giving too much away we have explored in that scene how the piano is the thing linking us physically.”

Audrey Brisson, who plays Édith Piaf, starred in Amélie in the West End and Jekyll and Hyde at Reading Rep Theatre.

“Audrey is an absolute inspiration,” says Djavan. “I had known about her from the days of Amélie and we have some mutual friends within the industry.

“When I heard she was attached to the project and when I got my audition through, with Audrey in the leading role of Piaf, I was like, well, that makes perfect sense because she is phenomenal.

“She has such grace and timing and she is such a strong actress. She has said ‘This is my Hamlet’.

“She really does it justice. It’s a wonderful progression because we get to see Piaf from her being quite young, to Piaf at the end of her days and that sort of physical progression, that vocal progression, it’s all there within her performance.

“The relationship with Marcel is an interesting one because she is quoted as saying Marcel was the love of her life. It is then also interesting that Marcel was maybe the one person she never had closure with because she couldn’t.”

Boxer Marcel Cerdan, Piaf’s lover, was killed in an aeroplane crash at the age of just 33 on his way to New York to see her.

“Marcel was married and she was Marcel’s mistress, and yet his loyalty towards his family continued. She continued taking care of the family after Marcel had passed and one of his children wrote a book, Piaf et moi, about their relationship with the singer.

“The play explores many aspects of her life,” says Djavan.

“It’s very fast-paced, every scene will almost be a different time period and a different instrumental part of her life.

“She was known for having many a lover and she sang about love, she sang about losing people, she sang about the beauty of what love could be.

“She was a true romantic in that sense. There’s a very special moment again in the first act where we have the period during the war and then seeing what they had to do to survive.

“Postwar as well, where one of her best friends, Marlene Dietrich, who was just the most incredible singer and icon and star, they have a moment where they celebrate being reunited after the war because she was German and Piaf was French and that is one of my favourite moments of the show, also featuring the famous song La Vie en rose.

“This is essentially a play with music and the songs often just give a bit more context to what is happening. The original playwright Pam Gems did such a brilliant job of choosing these songs to amplify these moments and we have even added a couple, one called Padam, which is all about how she experiences performing in a period where there was some heavy drug use for her and how that ticking was always in her ear, the musicality of it.”

The cast also comprises Tzarina-Nassor (Toine/fight captain), Hazel Monaghan (Louis), Signe Larsson (Marlene/Madeleine/ movement captain), Marc Serratosa (Charles/ Georges), Oliver Nazareth Aston (Raymond/Theo), Sam Pay (Leplée/ Vaimbert), Jon Trenchard (Bruno/onstage musical director) and Kit Kenneth (onstage swing).

Directed by Kimberley Sykes with musical supervisor Sam Kenyon, set and costume design is by Good Teeth, lighting design by Prema Mehta, sound design by Andy Graham, movement direction and intimacy co-ordination by Michela Meazza, fight direction by Dani McCallum and assistant sound design by Pierre Flasse.

Djavan adds: “I was very lucky to be offered the job and I knew it would challenge me in a different way and that is something I’m always trying to do as an actor. I felt like I wanted to be pushed to a new limit.

“An actor-muso show is something that was absolutely daunting but we have such a supportive team of Sam Kenyon and Kimberley Sykes as our creatives. It is a new version of Piaf and it’s like a diamond in the rough.”

l Piaf is at the Watermill Theatre in Bagnor, until Saturday, May 17. Tickets cost from £22.50. For more information, call the box office on 01635 46044 or visit www.watermill.org.uk