Pitch-perfect pain in Piaf

In her tiny black dress with her tiny blackened lungs, Edith Piaf stands, clawing at her stomach for the music to come. But she is wheezing and weeping. The Voice - the one that sounds like it has swallowed razor-blades - isn't there. An anonymous horde presses forward to pick her up and strip off her clothes one by one - and Piaf begins.

In these first moments, it seems as if Pam Gems's play will be yet another version of that old and ever-new story: the star who overdosed on herself. We all know the cliché: the talent and the sickness feed off each other, lifting the heroine up while tearing her down. Think the myth of Judy Garland; think the myth of Amy Winehouse. But it soon becomes clear this production is more raw, and more real, than these honeyed lies.

This Edith Piaf is on a 47-year trajectory from gutter to gutter, via the great concert halls of the world. Born on the streets, she staggered into success and soon surrounded herself with a coterie of addicts and beautiful young men who feasted on her fame.

In Jamie Lloyd's bare, low-tech production - on a black, brick stage - the romance is stripped away as surely as her clothes: she is an addict with great lungs.

There is no redemption in this pain; it doesn't buy the lie. We watch her vomit and stab needles into her arm and morph into a prematurely-old, balding gargoyle. This is a guttural and smelly and authentic show: it is as far from jazz-handing feel-goodery as musicals get. The only things reaching up for the sky are her veins.

Before I saw this production, Elena Roger seemed odd casting as Piaf: an Argentinian as the most iconic Frenchwoman of the 20th century? She was great as Evita - but this? From her first moments at the microphone, every doubt evaporates. She has folded herself into Edith Piaf so perfectly you cannot see the join. She might be smaller than ET but her voice is like her subject's: vast and bitter and irresistible. For nearly two hours, she is Piaf. She crashes through life with only The Voice as armour - a singing car crash, skidding on booze and opiates. As Edith destroys herself, Roger's body shrivels, and her voice grows.

Piaf is structured so each scene bleeds into the next; there is little sustained dialogue-in this opium-haze. The audience has to pull the story together from the jagged shards of narrative that jut between Piaf 's songs: the dead baby, the pimping, the lost love of her life. The ensemble melt in and out of a range of roles, so Piaf 's ego - at once monstrous and broken - is the only fixed point we have. "I'm a draw," she says, "They come to see if I can stay on my feet."

When Rogers ends the show inevitably singing Je Ne Regrette Rien with pitch-perfect pain, it seems less like an act of defiance - and more like a grasping, ironic anthem to denial.

Until 20 September. Box office 0870 060 6624, www. donmarwarehouse.com

Piaf
Donmar Warehouse
Earlham Street, Seven Dials, WC2H 9LX