The musicals sensation is starring as the troubled French chanteuse in the bawdy biodrama Piaf. How will she hit the high notes when she can’t speak the language?
Don’t ever ask Jenna Russell to do a big tap number. “I can’t dance to save my life,” she says, even though she had to do the lot – ballet, tap and modern – at drama school. “I was appalling at all of them,” she adds. But who needs great footwork when you have a voice that can break hearts? Russell’s powerful singing has made her one of Stephen Sondheim’s favourite performers. And she’s now taking on an iconic artist who was also more about the drama than the dancing: Edith Piaf.It’s a daunting role. In Pam Gems’ bawdy feminist biodrama Piaf, which opens shortly at Nottingham Playhouse, the French
Singer is rarely offstage, singing, snarling and swearing with abandon. “It’s scary,” says Russell, “because I can’t speak a word of French. Not a word.” She admits to being slightly relieved when lockdown intervened, because it gave her longer to learn Piaf’s feisty repertoire. She’s been working with French
Actor Félicité du Jeu and “sitting on the Spotify account, rewinding and trying to write down the sound. And there’s 90 pages of dialogue!”Speaking via Zoom just before rehearsals begin, Russell is also finding ways to tackle Piaf’s distinctive, nerve-jangling alto wail. “Often my voice seems to die halfway through rehearsals and then builds up again around the
music. It’s like moulding it, I guess – like a plaster cast of the show.” She describes Piaf’s voice as “a genuine, earthy, honest sound. I think that was why she connected to people – it was the sound of their mother or aunt, the sound of the streets.”