‘Piaf’ Needs Script to Support Star Turn

The apotheosis of histrionic diva-ness, Torill is a Norwegian-born entertainer whose porcelain face and vaulting, precisely plucked eyebrows are emblematic of a grander age.

“Piaf: Sa Vie En Rose” at the Court Theatre, Torill’s show about the tortured and adored French chanteuse Edith Piaf, is a rousing, unabashedly retro star turn that fails to adequately synthesize the fragmented life of its troubled subject.

Torill has made something of a specialty out of impersonating show business icons in one-woman musicals written by and starring herself. For the past several years, she has toured widely in “Rendez-vous With Marlene,” a play about the life of Marlene Dietrich, another camp idol.

The throaty-voiced Torill is an accomplished performer whose every gesture and intonation have been finely tuned by director Jules Aaron and musical director-piano accompanist Sergio Minervini.

Unfortunately, Torill’s structurally messy show wavers alarmingly between a cabaret sensibility and surreal theatricality, and it loses focus in a barrage of secondary characters.

Entire segments--the bulk of the show, in fact--are devoted to Piaf’s contemporaries, both celebrated and obscure, who offer rambling commentaries about the Little Sparrow and her famously hedonistic propensities.

Collectively, these characters render a broad and familiar overview of Piaf’s life--her battle with drugs, her lapses into madness, her promiscuity and failed romances. Even Dietrich, who was somewhat more tenuously connected to Piaf than, say, her half-sister or her best friend, offers her two cents’ worth--more to showcase Torill’s imitative abilities, we suspect, than for any other reason. And a mad scene, in which a white-faced Piaf rolls her eyes and gnashes her teeth behind asylum walls, is overdone and inappropriate.

First-rate production elements, particularly J. Kent Inasy’s lighting and the sumptuous wigs and costumes by Mark Goff and Troy Hedrick, are integral to the strikingly stylish look of the production. Thomas Rincker deserves praise both for his crisp sound design and for the fascinating archival film clips neatly incorporated into the show.

As for Torill, her acting talent is never in question. The cabaret is her natural milieu, and she takes to it like a sparrow to a birdbath. But now, is there a script doctor in the house?

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“Piaf: Sa Vie En Rose,” Court Theatre, 722 N. La Cienega Blvd., West Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 28. $29. (310) 289-2999. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.