'I Wish You Love' traces the intense friendship between Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich through dialogue and their own songs. It is a sober, vinegary piece that pits Piaf's skittish, at times hysterical brashness against Dietrich's feline, measured cynicism. Babette Bell captures Piaf's brittle outlandishness rather well (her howl at the death of Marcel, like Angelina Jolie's in 'A Mighty Heart', is disquietingly primal) and belts out the songs with appropriate gusto, but Clare Chandler's Dietrich is a honeyed, stagey caricature. It almost comes across as a spoof of the wry, weary diva type particular to 40's and 50's Hollywood (Bette Davis in 'All About Eve', especially). Dietrich was an enigmatic character and an intoxicating performer, so Chandler's task was never going to be easy, but during the songs and particularly during the dialogue her performance is a one-note, complacent parody of itself, though I'm not sure she's helped by the writing. The scenes of dialogue drag as the play progresses and, in Dietrich's case especially, one can almost imagine writer Sarah Hymas cramming in as much biographical, expositary detail as possible (Dietrich: 'I've worked with Welles and Hitchcock...'), but there is little genuine dramatic connection between these two gifted narcissists.There is a rich, ambiguous and pertinent play lurking in here somewhere, but at the moment any sense of drama is obviated by a staid set (a bistro cafe table with a couple of glasses of wine, plus microphone) and an irritatingly written and performed Dietrich. Also, the two actresses affect a pair of accents I've never heard in my life, so these may need refining. A smoky, wispy affair with plenty of old songs and a nice interpretation of Piaf, this is one for the purists.
