Jenna: Je ne regrette rien... except not learning French
JeNNA russeLL said that she will need to call on ‘ some unearthly power’ to help her portray the volatile French singer edith Piaf.
russell and her reallife best friend sally Ann triplett — who will play edith’s confidante toine in a revival of Pam Gems’ Piaf, directed by Adam Penford — open at the Nottingham Playhouse on May 8.
Jenna has to learn several songs in French. ‘I’m getting there,’ she told me, ‘but I’m trying to learn abstract vowel sounds.’ she vaguely recalled French being on the curriculum when she studied at sylvia Young’s theatre school, ‘ but I was too busy trying to sound like ethel Merman to pay attention’.
there are eight ballads and they go right to the core of Piaf’s ‘nightmares and torments’, as Jane
Lapotaire, who created the role, once put it.
Piaf died of suspected liver cancer in 1963. she was 47. she had at one point been the world’s highest paid singer but died penniless.
‘she was an incredibly vulnerable, fierce woman,’ said russell, who can skip between tragedies and musical theatre. For instance, two days after finishing in Piaf she will begin rehearsals for Hello, Dolly!.
Jenna said that from watching and listening to Piaf performing, it was obvious that ‘something of her was eaten up every time she sang’.
‘ How extraordinary when we see those performers — and they’re rare but they’re out there — who do that. You want to wrap them up in cotton wool. It shreds your heart and soul.’
she and triplett first met on cameron Mackintosh’s production of Follies, playing younger versions of the characters portrayed by Millicent Martin and Julia McKenzie.