Prospect recommends: Martha Wainwright Sings Piaf

Tributes to easy listening icons are a risky business. At best they can sound nostalgic and second rate, at worst like a cheap shot at selling sack-loads of contemporary CDs on the back of someone else’s pony. In her new Edith Piaf show, however, singer songwriter Martha Wainwright has dodged such predicaments, interpreting France’s most cherished chanteuse with charm, intelligence and wit.

Forgoing karaoke classics like “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” for less familiar songs—“Une Enfant” laments the demise of a foolish 16-year-old girl who falls for a blackguardly bohème—Wainwright has transcended French nationalism and connected Piaf’s emotional and tragic heart to her own lovelorn sensibilities of dejection, irony and conceit. And as a French speaker herself (she grew up in Canada with brother Rufus) she delivers the songs easily, backed by a band sympathetic to the eccentricities of Piaf’s arrangements.



Edith Piaf has enjoyed several revivals in recent years, notably in the 2007 Oscar-winning film La Vie En Rose and last year’s stage show, Piaf. But Wainwright’s interpretations hope to lift her out of Parisian cliché and into a contemporary context in which a new generation of fans awaits. A live recording and DVD is due out this autumn.

Barbican, 11th November, Tel: 0845 120 7550, www.barbican.org.uk