BWW Reviews: STREET SINGER Inspires at The OUT NYC Hotel

"No!" she sings. The first note sailed, as from the ruddy heart of the Seine to the mood indigo of the Hudson. "I regret nothing!"

In her words, Non Je ne Regret Rien!

From the infamy of Pigalle, to the ostentation of Broadway, choreographer and dancer Pascal Rioult threw a munificent 100th birth year celebration for France's national diva. STREET SINGER - Celebrating the Life of Edith Piaf premiered to the world with all of the air of her gaining posthumous glory.

From the derelict streets of Paris, the petite, nearly blinded Édith, entered the world with the surname Gassion. Orphaned, and raised in a brothel, she first opened her legendary voice on the street. Decades later, the world would call her Sparrow, or Piaf.

Rioult formerly danced with Martha Graham, and so staged a hearteningly charged chemistry with Broadway star Christine Andreas.

Andreas has an uncanny resemblance to Piaf, who she evoked with a masterful grace. The act of singing from the toes is a rare gift, especially with such shoes to fill. Any other voice is but a far cry from the triumphant power and authentic gravity that was Piaf's peerless, self-made art.

In any event, the highfalutin cabaret décor dangled out in front of the atavistically minded audience at The OUT NYC Hotel. All were transported to nostalgia-land, where a song can change actors into their muses, and onlookers into the eyes of a bygone era.

Senior citizens and uptown hipsters alike reminisced together, of a time when to see Piaf at her NYC premiere in 1947 cost less than half the price of a beer sold at the luxury venue, a couple blocks from Times Square.

Yet, for those who could see through the limelight, there the honesty of Andreas stilled every heart sensitive enough to hear in her voice the sound of the Sparrow. She held the stage with all the feminine strength of her enlightened homage.

The beauty of Piaf is that she spread her survivalist streetwise sense into the hellholes of the Second World War. From the bordellos of her youth, to the thick of Nazi prostitution, she never shed her absolutely French spirit of resistance and liberation.

She saved well over a hundred prisoners of war by her ingeniously staged wiles. These numerous and incredibly courageous acts enshrined her reputation with the best of Europe's artists who the Nazis spared. Many artists marked by such talent went on to secretly join resistance movements, such as the famed Greek-Jewish Rembetika singer Roza Eskenazi, also given an avian nickname, Sweet Canary.

The youthful sensuality of Rioult's choreography bore significant juxtaposition against the more classic repose of his and Andreas' presences onstage. The dancers exhibited the carnal, though soulful passions of life born as a star-crossed Parisian ascending to the heights of prominence in the golden age of the crooner.

Her story, as played, danced, sung, and kissed through Street Singer is awash in the deep, tragic and wonderfully magical romance of the Sparrow, in cherished memory.

As from above, she intoned through her timeless masterpiece La Vie en Rose:

When you press me to your heart

I'm in a world apart

A world where roses bloom

Photo Credit: Paul B. Goode

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