Review of Toujours l’Amour in Perth Theatrel

Nov 18 2011 by Alison Anderson, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

IT was wonderful to see Perth Theatre bursting at the seams on Saturday night for a quality show by four very talented local performers.

The occasion was the well-constructed cabaret-style narrative of the rise and fall of France’s Little Sparrow, Edith Piaf, starring Perth’s own songbird Lesley Mackie, actor/writer/director Terry Wale and musicians Michael Ellacott on piano and accordionist Jim Cleland.

After sell-out performances of Toujours l’Amour in Perth Theatre Redrooms in 2009 and 2010, it was indeed a wise move by Lesley and her husband Terry to reprise their moving reflection on Piaf’s turbulent and relatively short life in the theatre’s main house.

As the sell-out audience filed into their seats, the spotlight shone on the front-of-stage microphone waiting for the star of the show to step in to the empty space. Yet with a clever twist of stagecraft Toujours l’Amour opened to the sound of Jim’s accordion, the musician himself alone on the stage and looking the part with French beret and striped top.

Jim nonchalantly strolled across to the piano where he and Michael continued to set the Parisian scene with their medley of well-known French melodies.

Then Terry with his warm manner gave a little prologue – informing us of the 20th anniversary since Lesley last performed the main stage production of Piaf at Perth Theatre – and also it was 60 years since he made his debut as a professional actor.

This reviewer never saw Piaf, so cannot make comparisons between the two shows – Piaf and Toujours l’Amour. Suffice to say that the latter was absorbing and entertaining, and surely a worthy tribute to Edith Piaf and her place in history as France’s greatest popular singer.

Through Terry’s narrative we learned how as a young woman Piaf was plucked off the streets of Paris and rose to international stardom, but never shook off her mantle of disadvantage. We learned of her men trouble, links with the low-life of Paris and her slide into drug dependency and ill-health which led to her death from liver cancer in 1963, aged 47.

And interspersed with the narration were Lesley’s delightful delivery in French of the songs which gave Edith Piaf international fame, including La Vie En Rose and of course the heart-stopping Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, which Lesley reprised for her encore, earning well-deserved and prolonged applause.

Lesley had hinted that Saturday could be her farewell performance as Edith Piaf. Given the strength of her Perth Theatre performance and the enthusiasm from her audience, however, there could surely be mileage in Lesley, Terry, Michael and Jim getting together again to bring alive the songs of The Little Sparrow.

Alison Anderson