RECENT MEDIA COVERAGE

Songs in The Key Of Edith
Channeling Piaf, Helen Hedman Lets Herself Go

Jane Horwitz, Special to The Washington Post
July 29, 2003; Page C5

Who knew Helen Hedman could sing like Edith Piaf? The actress has a gift for playing British ladies in Wilde, Shaw, Shakespeare and any number of modern works ("Equus" and "A Question of Mercy" at Olney, "A Woman of No Importance" and "The Country Wife" at the Shakespeare Theatre). But just now, with her delicate features made up to look haggard, she's assaying a drug-addicted chanteuse from the slums of pre-World War II Paris.

"You just stand on the high dive and go. There's no way out . . . you're in the spotlight and the piano starts, you've just got to do it," says Hedman of her role as the singer.

"Piaf," by British playwright Pam Gems, is part of the three-play Potomac Theatre Project, which runs through Aug. 10 in the intimate Mulitz-Gudelsky Theatre Lab at Olney Theatre Center for the Arts. It's Potomac's annual summer offering of modern British fare at bargain prices for the theatrically adventurous.

In her research, Hedman says she learned that Piaf, who died at age 47 in 1963, "had four car crashes, four cures for alcoholism, a cure for drug addiction, a sleeping cure, severe arthritis and rheumatism . . . bronchial pneumonia, internal disorders, seven major operations -- and she sold 40 million records." Adds Hedman, "She was hell on wheels and had the biggest heart in the world."

With "Piaf" and her role as a furiously grieving widow in "Bea's Niece," recently at MetroStage, Hedman has let her own elegant stage persona slip. "I think for a long time I wanted to be perfect at something, or at least appear to be perfect. And then just a couple things came along and I just kind of said, there's no other choice to do with this, but just let go -- totally let go."

This summer's Potomac Theatre Project explores "creativity and madness" and how "in some ways, the art ricochets back on the artist," says Cheryl Faraone. She directed "Crave," a fiery 45-minute exploration of English playwright Sarah Kane's seared and segmented inner self, with four seated actors delivering impassioned monologues and engaging in fevered dialogue, never making eye contact. "It's really a high-wire act," says Faraone of the rhythmic complexity in Kane's script. The playwright committed suicide in 1999 while still in her twenties and has become a cultural figure in Britain and continental Europe.

Richard Romagnoli, who runs PTP with Faraone (his wife) and British stage director Chris Hayes, directed Harold Pinter's 1974 play "No Man's Land," about a writer imprisoned by fame, drink and age and the threadbare poseur poet who tries to glom onto him. Romagnoli says he has long wanted to pair Alan Wade and Richard Pilcher on the stage. "They have wonderful technical gifts," he says of their ability to play British as if to the accent born.

Hayes directed "Piaf," and staged "Scotland Road" for PTP last summer. Though he has worked in London's West End and other major venues, he says he likes the shoestring PTP ambiance. "It's a wonderfully supportive, creative environment. . . . There's something about not quite having enough money to do things with, which forces you to improvise your way out of a situation. When you do that, you often make better artistic choices.