World creation of a world star. Jacques d’Ancona: Musical ‘Piaf’ deserves full houses | review ★★★★★

An incredibly beautiful, moving production. Suzan Seegers plays and sings the title role Piaf . It is a world creation in the style and character of a world star.

With her overwhelming individuality, she never falls into an imitation. Don’t say that she has ‘everything’ in voice and figure. She’s phenomenal. Her performance exudes irresistible allure. But Seegers is not alone. The three musicians are more than accompanists and the ensemble has four actors who play various intriguing solo roles and function aptly as a choir.

Dazzling find

The most productive Dutch musical writer Allard Blom, also involved in the previous one Piaf , has provided the piece with a dazzling discovery. The performance opens and ends with the death of the famous singer, who died of rheumatism, in combination with alcoholism, osteoarthritis and addiction to morphine and similar substances. It is not an art to introduce glamor in a roundabout way. However, this is entirely about the power of the story, not about lazy effects. Anyone who expects a shell of cowardly, colorful show scenes should stay at home.

As a director, Martin Michel proves himself to be a master with smooth, overwhelming transitions between the scenes in which the chansons (obviously sung in French) provide the illustration and the changes in Piaf’s costume take on a symbolic charge. It is suggestive that in the finale the emphasis is on stillness and not on Non, you regret rien , her top song. Édith Piaf knew how terribly good and excruciatingly ambitious she was, but also how capricious and contrary in love, her insecurity and the choice of the wrong friends who were bent on putting the knife to her throat.

Brutal sparrow with huge beak

She had talent. A shame to waste. Singing was a necessity for her. Piaf started out on the street as a singer, the cheeky sparrow with a huge beak. Grew up in a cold family, was pushed out of the nest, but believed in the working of tarot cards. In the musical, four people model what happens to her in the change from who you are to who you once were. Thomas Cammaert in a starring role as the Angel and next to him Cystine Carreon as Death, Hein Gerrits as the Fool and Job Bovelander as the Devil. Each of them believable in terms of characterization.

Édith Piaf lived in her own shadow. Suzan Seegers makes it palpable: on the way to the exit, Piaf ‘had to cover the last meters all alone…’ The audience reacted ‘un-Groningen’ with an applause that continued when the front curtain no longer opened.

Let me not say that the halls are not full during the tour.