Ivy Jones Re-Creates Triumphs, Trials of Piaf

Actresses love to do Edith Piaf because it’s like shooting for the stars. It’s great to sink your teeth into the tempestuous, soulful, alcoholic, drug-addicted “little sparrow” with the million tragic love affairs--but it’s quite another thing for an actress to catch Piaf’s inimitable, throbbing voice.

What’s unexpected about Ivy Jones’ portrayal in “Piaf” at the American Renegade Theatre is Jones’ singing, not her interpretation of Piaf’s crazed, off-stage life.

Jones doesn’t speak French but she has phonetically and strikingly caught the quivering lyrics and passion of such Piaf classics as “Je Ne Regrette Rien” (“I Regret Nothing”) and “Les Momes De La Cloche” (“The Kids of the Bum Class”). Costumed in Piaf’s characteristic black dress and mirroring Piaf’s slight body and tremulous vocal power, Jones effortlessly knocks off 10 Piaf standards in a production cast with 10 actors playing 30 characters who loved and abused her.

When she’s vocalizing, Jones is the spunky, tormented, legendary Parisian gamine. It’s the squalor and insecurity of her life between songs that can’t match the artist in the spotlight.

Pam Gems’ musical drama is a chronology of the raffish people in Piaf’s life--boxers, pimps, prostitutes, celebrities--and her bawdy response to most of them. Even her relationship with her devoted secretary (Patty Medina) is painful.

Jones plays these scenes with a raw, haggard vulgarity that makes it hard to see the soul and the courage in Piaf until she steps in front of a mike, like the famous “miracle concert” in ’59 when she was too mortally sick to go on but did anyway and a nation gushed as she warbled. (She survived four more years and died at 47.)

Offstage, this version of Piaf is that of another ravaged show business casualty. History is stacked with gifted giants whose personal lives were disasters.

Whether spreading her legs and mocking a trollop (as a joke with her dearest friend and old hooker buddy, played by the brassy Sarah Benoit) or loving and losing a succession of men (the dashing Tony Jensen and Randle Roper in quadruple roles), Jones never loses sight of Piaf’s big heart.

“Piaf,” American Renegade Theatre,” 11305 Magnolia Blvd. North Hollywood . Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends May 24. $12-$15; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours.

Ode to a Woman’s Quest for Oneness

A totally different theater experience is the poetic love story “Chitra,” a multi-ethnic adaptation of Indian playwright Rabindranath Tagore’s ode to a woman’s quest for oneness--specifically a union of her warrior/goddess personalities.

Written 100 years ago, “Chitra” has been performed only once in America in the 80 years since Tagore (known as “the Shakespeare of India”) prepared the translation, according to director Nelson Handel’s program note.

Handel’s contemporary treatment is silken, mythic and lyrical, akin to a primitive storybook ablaze with golden colors dreamily materializing as if in sleep. The effect, embellished by a fusion of dance and musical forms, exotic costumes and special visual components, turns the Skylight Theatre into a virtual tapestry (with set design by Bill Eigenbrodt and artful sound design by Gary Stockdale and Jerry Summers).

Handel has two elegant actresses play the entitled warrior/goddess (Sherlynn Hicks, who is African-American, and Page Leong, who is Asian). With a world-shaking kiss, they consummate a union with the greatest warrior in the universe (blond Thomas Kopache). They are aided by dancer Linda Hammett and S. Kyle Parker in a singularly evocative production which, appropriately, was produced by the Eastern Edge Theatre Company.

“Chitra,” Skylight Theatre, 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Blvd., Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends June 6. $14; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 50 minutes.

‘Psychic Poker’ Hot Late-Night Ticket

From the Valley to the beaches, improv groups are springing up like giggling encampments. One of the more recent gestations, “Psychic Poker: Cheaper Than a Bowl of Cereal at the Airport,” has become a hot late-night ticket at Theatre Theater.

The overflow crowd crammed into the doorway all at once, looking just like the bulging, poking heads and arms in “Psychic Poker’s” signature entrance. This is the same troupe that drew laughs last year at the Friends and Artists Theatre when they called themselves The HepCats. They’re clever and fleet of tongue and foot. To an almost unwarranted degree, the new audience raved.

Under director-performer Carolyn Omine, the company’s five women and three men favor rehearsed sketches over improvs suggested by the audience. The talents on this night were bulky Greg Wall, preppy Steve Mazur, neurotic Michelle Seipp and the ingenuous J. C. Wendel (the single addition from last year).

The execution is better than the material. The show’s running gag, “Overheard in the Ladies Room,” is well-performed, but it’s a chuckler that’s been done to death. On the other hand, “I Married a Performance Artist” is as pointed as a confessional one-woman “Swan Lake” at Highways might be.

“Psychic Poker,” Theatre Theater, 1713 Cahuenga Blvd., West Hollywood, Fridays only, 10:30 p.m. Ends June 12. $5; (213) 466-0983. Running time: 1 hour.

Abortion Saga Lacks Production Values

A play about women’s choices sounds timely but “Carla” at the Gene Dynarski Theatre, written by former public interest lawyer Leonard Post, is essentially only relevant to people living in the dark ages when abortions were performed by coat hanger.

A scene reflecting this is staged like something out of Frankenstein. But for L.A. today, “Carla” is terribly musty and without sufficient production values to compensate for its datedness.

As a look at old nightmares, “Carla” serves up pre-Roe vs. Wade abortion history, when society forced women seeking abortions into back alleys. But this 11-actor memory play, featuring demure Elizabeth Shue as the beleaguered heroine, is too cautiously staged by Lawrence Rivera. The effect is flat and clunky.

On the plus side, Shue is softly compelling. Blanche Rubin’s Jewish Mama has her moments, and the moony Tom Henschel as the narrator/nephew in love with the victimized Carla gives the play its melancholy hue.

“Carla,” Gene Dynarski Theatre, 5600 W. Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Ends May 31. $18-$20; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours.

Peter Dennis Surveys Literature of Satan

T British actor Peter Dennis thinks highly of the devil. Precise and sardonic, he stands in a velvet dinner jacket and surveys the literature of Satan as seen by the giants of the Western world in his one-man “Speak of the Devil” at the Tamarind Theatre (in repertory with Dennis’ other solo, “Bother!,” a Winnie-the-Pooh medley).

This civilized evening of snippets and homilies from the father of Evil, smoothly directed by Cordelia Monsey and cleverly conceived by Yvonne Mitchell, shows that Lucifer is in all of us. Not to worry, because he’s an exciting personality: refined, audacious, witty and unconquerable.

Compiled from works by Byron, Defoe, Flaubert, Goethe, Milton, Marlowe, Shaw, and the Mystery Plays, among others, the production glides through a galaxy of Serpents and Demons. There’s no particular development to the piece, but Dennis is an expressive gentleman and devil worship is not his thing. This plunge into the Inferno is bittersweet--and best of all for us sinners, only an hour of Hell.

“Speak of the Devil,” Tamarind Theatre, 5915 Franklin Ave., Hollywood, Fridays and Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends May 10. $15; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hours, 10 minutes.