Pam Gems's Piaf is a casting director's nightmare. Few plays are so dependent on the physical proximity of the leading performer, and once you've found a plausible match for the scrawny French songbird, you're still left with the hunt for someone who can play Marlene Dietrich.
Handled badly it can all look horribly like a bohemian edition of Stars in Their Eyes, but Damian Cruden's assured production sidesteps the karaoke pitfalls by transforming the Theatre Royal into a credibly seedy, bombed-out atelier.
As Piaf, Elizabeth Mansfield produces a performance of real star quality that has both feet planted firmly in the gutter. Mansfield has a manic, malnourished intensity that captures the soul of the artist from the moment she appears in a louche Parisian lounge bar and squats down to water the stage.
Most impressive of all is Mansfield's vocal fidelity to the Little Sparrow. She sings like an alcoholic nightingale and speaks like Pat Butcher from EastEnders. The songs are a stream of concentrated emotion, the speeches a pile-up of unbroken profanities. Throughout her life, Piaf seemingly had only two reasons to stop swearing: either to sing or to shove a bottle down her throat.
Mansfield's account of Piaf's repertoire is superb. She stands petrified in a spotlight in that trademark black dress, her pupils glazed, the veins on her neck bulging and her knees bent in an attitude of someone suffering deep emotional hurt (or chronic constipation). The voice is outstanding - a silken thread with grace notes of razor wire, and she spits the words out as if she detests them.
The drawback of Gems's play is its pattern of morbid repetition. The drugs get progressively harder and the lovers progressively younger, until you wish that at some point Piaf had taken up a gentler pursuit, flower arranging maybe, just for the sake of variation. The fact that someone lived a sad life does not automatically qualify them as a tragic heroine, and whereas Piaf lived a pitifully short life, Gems's play is ominously long. There is great support from the whole cast, however, and if you miss it that would be something to regret, after all.
· Until June 22. Box office: 01904 623568.
