Porter & Piaf

An evening with Cole Porter and Edith Piaf – yes, please! Being a big fan of both I was very much looking forward to this show – and I was not disappointed. Porter and Piaf is actually two separate cabaret shows, Cole and Exposing Edith by local award winning cabaret artists Michael Griffiths (Porter) and Michaela Burger (Piaf). Burger is accompanied by the equally talented Greg Wain.

The positivity among the performers and audience was infectious but stood in sharp contrast to the context and narrative in both shows, which often covered certain painful and life-changing moments in Piaf’s and Porter’s lives.

The central conceit for both shows is that of placing particular songs within an autobiographical context, and suggest that these songs were inspired and/or created in response to a real life issue. Fair enough, as it does work - very well. However, there was something niggling in the back of my mind, reminding myself of the danger of assuming a particular piece of creative and artistic work, including songs, lyrics, music and poetry, is based on a personal experience. It was T. S. Eliot who waved the red flag on this issue; that it is a mistake to make such assumptions. If a work of art can stand alone, especially when it transcends the time and context of first conception and performance, it is primarily due to the imaginative and creative powers, talents and skills of the respective artist; this is a greater influence than a personal event. Placing a biographical issue as the source of inspiration, and the corresponding work a direct response, can lead to an overall sense of ‘poor me – but look what I did!’ There is an element of this in the narrative drive of both Cole and Exposing Edith.

Michael Griffiths begins his performance as Cole Porter by limping painfully up to the stage via a small flight of steps at the front of the auditorium. This was done silently and was rather poignant – if a bit drawn out. This is a ‘Cole Porter’ post-1937 after his horse-riding accident that left him crippled and in severe pain for the rest of his life. Griffith, however, once seated, launches into a rendition of  ‘Anything Goes’, one of Porter’s most popular and well-known songs, written just three years before Porter’s accident. The lyrics to ‘Anything Goes’ are deliciously salacious, and the joy of hearing it out of its original context was enhanced when Griffiths brings in lyrics that were not from the original show but from when Porter performed the song at parties. Even more salacious – and the audience at the Playhouse roared with laughter.

Griffiths, as Porter, then introduces his crippled legs (another silent and rather slo-ooow set-up) - ‘Josephine’ and ‘Geraldine’. Now, I don’t know if this is true or not, and I was so charmed by Griffiths that I didn’t really care, but images of Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) crept into my head.

Griffiths’ narrative line makes a point of the considerable pain Porter experienced from 1937 to his death in 1964. He weaves it into his narrative, which includes reminiscences of Porter’s life in Paris in the 1920s, meeting and marrying Linda Lee Thompson (‘Let’s Do It! Let’s Fall in Love’, ‘What is this thing called Love’), and his return to New York in 1930 (‘I happen to like New York’). Griffiths performs these songs wonderfully, but the niggle that these songs reflected personal life issues and not the actual given circumstances of the respective shows and productions for which they were written returned to distract me.

Griffiths delivers all the songs he has chosen to help illuminate the personal life of Cole Porter with great assurance and ease; it’s the issue of the crippled legs that worried me, particularly as Griffiths make constant references to them. He doesn’t really take us into the immediate post-accident repertoire, and of Porter’s songs from the 1940s and 1950s too much, the post-accident repertoire. This surprised me a bit, as Porter wrote ‘At Long Last Love’ immediately after the accident whilst waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Panama Hattie (1940) contains one of the best pain-killer songs, “Make it Another Old Fashioned, Please’, Let’s Face It (1941) has ‘Ace in the Hole’, Something for the Boys (1943) has ‘Leader of a Big Time Band’, ‘Hey, Good Lookin’’, ‘There’s a Happy Land in the Sky’, and ‘By the Mississinewa’ – perfect for the autobiographical self-effacing tone of Griffith’s narrative line. ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’ is also from this period, from Seven Lively Arts (1944), as is ‘Be a Clown’ from the highly underrated Vincente Minnelli film The Pirate (1948) with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly – and then there is Kiss Me, Kate (1948). Instead, however, it is Porter’s songs from the 1930s, the pre-accident period, that Griffith’s performs, notably a beautiful and touching version of ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ (he/she is unable to lunch today). This is linked to Porter being a cripple, but the song was actually written in 1934.

I’m showing off; but I do know and love my Cole Porter, and was quite prepared to accept Griffiths’ conceit of the songs reflecting personal experience – I just think considering his terrific talent, charm, and love for Cole Porter that he could have gone farther. In all honesty, however, Porter is the true winner in Griffith’s tribute, and this is largely due to Griffiths himself. It’s not a great acting performance, but it is committed and faithful to Porter’s music and lyrics; the wit of the songs as performed by Griffith were ‘delightful, delirious, and de-lovely’.

Edith Burger also begins her Exposing Edith by coming through the auditorium – as Edith Piaf. Like Griffiths’, this type of entrance seems more suited for a cabaret room than a proscenium arch theatre, but nonetheless, they were both strong and vastly different engaging entrances. After nearly blasting us out our seat with her first wonderful song as Piaf, alerting us to what a terrific singer she is, Burger drops the Piaf persona and becomes herself. After introducing Greg Wain she reveals how her passionate connection with Piaf began. She was a young teenage girl living in Paris on kind of ‘Living Abroad’ program when the French mother who was looking after her introduced her to Piaf. The sardonic cigarette smoking French mother is the first of a number of characters that Burger plays, as well as Piaf, and her own stage persona, throughout this autobiographical narrative of Edith Piaf’s life. It is Burger’s assured mercurial and seemingly effortless jumping from character to character that is one reason why she is so compelling to watch – and her singing is simply fantastic!

You can never be really too sure about Edith Piaf’s life story. Unlike Porter, who was very discreet, the life and loves of Edith Piaf were very public, at times national news in newspapers, radio and TV. So there is little difficulty here in providing evidence of a how a particular song reflects a personal moment in Piaf’s life. However, as needs must said, Piaf was also notorious for not always telling the truth, or changing and/or embellishing the events of her past. Being a chronic alcoholic and morphine addict didn’t help – nor the number of car accidents she seems to have had, or the number of ‘lovers’ and ‘husbands’.

Burger and Wain weave the songs and narrative with an ease and fluidly, with Burger playing Piaf and other characters, and then singing a number of Piaf’s most well-known songs, and a couple not so well known, including her very last, ‘L’homme de Berlin’. At all times, supported by Greg Wain, Michaela Burger, playing Piaf or herself or one of the many other characters is truly delightful, engaging to the point of being mesmeric.

As with Griffiths and Porter’s sexual life, Burger pulls no punches when talking about Edith Piaf’s promiscuity, especially with soldiers, boxers, producers, song writers, and fellow artists – her protégés whom she mentored and who also were ‘lovers’ for a time included Yves Montand.

Whilst I may quibble a little and not be totally convinced that Porter’s brilliant songs and wit are also true reflections of his personal life, I do not have the same issue with Burger and Piaf; especially the use of ‘Mon Dieu’ to convey Piaf’s sense of loss and enormous grief over the death of Marcel Cerdan. Burger finishes her show with a somewhat apocryphal romantic story told by Piaf’s last companion, and second husband, Theo Sarapo, who was with Piaf when she died in 1963; that at the last minute she rallied and called, ‘Marcel! Marcel!’ and then died. True or false – we will never really know, and nor should we care; it only adds to the myth of Edith Piaf that Michaela Burger and Greg Wain so radiantly honour and shine in with their Exposing Edith.

At the end of the entire event Griffiths joined Burger and Wain on-stage for a couple of Cole Porter songs as a mutual encore, which was followed by a rapturous ovation from the audience, including many standing and cheering. The performances by all three artists were absolutely terrific!

Tony Knight