Syringa Tree: moving and wondrous
-Theatre review by Michelle Desbarats
Can a floor painted to resemble parched ground transform into the earth and dust of South Africa? Can an illusion of sky become the actual fabric over another place? Can a swing suspended from a branch of only belief be a doorway? As the audience settles into their seats for the opening night of The Syringa Tree, the first play of the GCTC’s 2009/10 season, Robin Fischer’s set design waits, stark and silent with promise.
The award-winning play was inspired by the playwright’s childhood in Johannesburg during the apartheid era. At the heart of the play is the connection between a white child and her black nanny. Because Pamela Gien, the author, has given so deeply of her heart, it is a moving and wondrous piece.
Lise Ann Johnson’s direction is nuanced and rich with haunting detail. The play opens enticingly with Elizabeth as a six-year old child swinging with her back to the audience. Then as she slows to a stop and turns in greeting, the two cords that suspend the swing twist together above her head. It is a charged metaphor for the energy that winds and unwinds throughout the evening; the maintaining of a present and the pull of the past.
An incredible challenge for an actor, the play is a one-woman show that covers four generations and, in the space of almost a hundred minutes, twenty-four characters. Patricia Fagan, making her GCTC debut, gives an outstanding performance. She evokes with her voice and body the sounds and motions of a six-year old which seconds later, become the arms and tones of her nanny. As other characters emerge from this one actor, Elizabeth’s mother and father to name only two more, the air begins to, could it be possible, be scented with mimosa and sandalwood.
Told through the eyes of a six-year old girl, a sense of heart-breaking innocence pervades the scenes as she conveys what she experiences. From this perspective the dramas that unfold allow the audience an effective space to enter. Notable moments include Elizabeth’s mother braving the night to search for a child who has disappeared, and a fourteen-year old girl’s cry for freedom shouted at a line of soldiers with guns, a moment that built powerfully accompanied by Marc Desormeaux’s musical selection. Another high point in Fagan’s performance was the scene where she got ready, as the young Elizabeth, to be washed of mud after playing. She is able to suggest the child’s invitation of the sun-heated treasure of the water. The Syringa Tree as a one-woman play reflects the telling of a story in the time- honoured oral tradition of bringing forth characters through the changing of voice and actions.
This is a memorable production to spend an evening with. This one story encompasses many. In the African tradition spirits and mystery rustle in the invisible leaves of a syringa tree.
GCTC’s production of “The Syringa Tree”, by Pamela Gien, plays the main stage of the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre until October 4; for showtimes contact the box office at 613 236 5196 or click here.
