“I can be happy, but not for long; it doesn’t go with my looks.” So said Edith Piaf, the passionate French singer born Edith Giovanna Gassion in 1915 on the streets of Paris “on a gendarme’s cape under a lamp-post”. The singer who was to take the world by storm with her unique style of presentation, not to mention her numerous lovers and excessive lifestyle.

Pieter Scholtz has written and directed Piaf: No Regrets currently running at Kwasuka Theatre. He has based it on a biography by Piaf’s half sister Simone Berteaut, published by Harper & Row under the title Piaf. (See full review in Drama/Theatre)