The Sparrow and the Mouse: Heart & Soul

Melanie Gall’s one woman musical, The Sparrow and the Mouse: Creating  the Music of Edith Piaf, combines great music with a compelling story and makes for some solid entertainment.

The play tells the rags to riches story of Edith Piaf, the great French singer through the eyes of her half-sister and bosom buddy side-kick, the mousy Marguerite Monnot.  This perspective gives the play an intimate feel, like we are being let in on what only a close friend would know about someone.  The anecdotes about Piaf’s life, are intercut with her songs, each of them serving to illuminate the emotional depth of their experiences which range from giving birth to deaths, successes and failures and humiliation.

Gall is a powerhouse singer, who clearly had training and performance chops.  She seems at home on stage and like a great hostess seems to delight in sharing her stories and her singing with us.   She makes these famous – some might say iconic – songs her own, which is no small feat and performs with what seems like endless enthusiasm and energy.  Her charm and easy rapport with the audience make her an engaging storyteller, and she manages at the same time to convey the shy plainness of the “mouse” trying to make ends meet.  She is convincingly bashful in the scene where she sings in a French “gentleman’s club” while trying to maintain her modesty.  At times however, her acting seemed pushed and doing less would make the show stronger in my opinion.

The simple and colourful set serves its purpose and transforms the black box theatre into a Paris boudoir which adds to the overall tone of the play.  I was unsure about the effectiveness of the voice-over however.  It allowed for some interesting physicality and some lovely moments, but the low quality of the recording undercut how great the other aspects of the play were.  

Gall takes us on a journey and the story has a great arc.  It would have been nice to have more vocal variety, but in general I thought it was well performed.  This is a great play, a fascinating story – well performed with heart and soul.