Janis Joplin as performed by Collette Cooper

COLLETTE Cooper bounds onto the stage, beads and feathers flying, and for a moment it’s as if music legend Janis Joplin is right there in front of me. Add a voice that soars and captures that Joplin bluesy, rock rasp and the effect is electric.

Respected actor and singer-songwriter Cooper charts the rise and tragic fall of Joplin in Tomorrow May Be My Last: The Janis Joplin Story – a musical and narrative homage to the late, great artist.

With the feel of a Woodstock music festival as the backdrop, Cooper takes us through Joplin’s life addressing the audience then launching into some of the star’s greatest hits.

We learn of Joplin’s uneasy upbringing in Port Arthur, Texas, where as an overweight teenager with acne she was taunted. Her university days were marginally better, but again she was the butt of cruel jibes when members of a frat house voted her the “ugliest man” on campus.

But music sustains her, including the likes of Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton and Lead Belly – all who went on to heavily influence her own style.
Success finally comes and with it the trappings of fame. There are love affairs and heartbreak, hard drinking and drugs.

Janis Joplin

Cooper captures the raucous, charismatic and defiant spirit of Joplin in a tour de force performance. She belts out some of Joplin’s best-loved songs, including the covers Ball and Chain and Cry Baby, as well as her Mercedes Benz, imploring the audience to “get up and dance” (which they do, happily).

There is also an original track, Tomorrow May Be My Last, written by Cooper and the show’s musical co-director Mike Hanson. It reflects the all-too-brief life of Joplin who died aged 27 from an accidental heroin overdose, but also serves as a poignant message to us all – to seize the day, the now. It was a philosophy Joplin believed in.

Cooper, who wrote and co-directed the show, is ably backed by a fantastic three-piece band and impressive supporting singers. Choreography is devised by the celebrated Arlene Phillips.

Tomorrow May Be My Last is a spellbinding retelling of the story of the powerhouse and enduring Joplin. As Cooper tells the audience as she dances, a feather boa floating around her: “Music is just a vibration of love.”

• Tomorrow May Be My Last: The Janis Joplin Story is at the Union Theatre, Southwark, from August 24-28, 7.30pm. Tickets £20, www.uniontheatre.biz/janis–tomorrow-may-be-my-last.html