REVIEWS ...
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
'Syringa Tree' digs deep with South African roots
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
Though so much of her country's history is written in blood, actor-playwright Pamela Gien roams mostly in different emotional territory in The Syringa Tree, her demanding dramatic memoir about what it felt like to grow up in a liberal white home in divided South Africa.
Newly opened at GableStage, with Claire Tyler playing the more than 20 characters spun from Gien's imagination, The Syringa Tree has both the ring of truth (a couple of crucial elements are from Gien's own life) and the inherent strength of an artfully crafted tale.
Its overarching emotion isn't one of horror at the deadly history of apartheid, though two tragic deaths in The Syringa Tree are intense, brutal reminders of that history. Instead, Gien tells her story from the point of view of the innocent, exuberant little girl she once was. The choice imbues the piece with a gentle sweetness, a child's playfulness and openness, and a wide-eyed way of looking at the justifiable fears of both the white and black adults she loves.
The play's narrator and central character is six-year-old Elizabeth Grace, the abundantly energetic daughter of a "Jewish atheist" doctor-father and a Catholic mother whose depression-induced "headaches" send her to her room for days at a time.
The other key adult in Elizabeth's life is Salamina Mashlope, a Xhosa woman who works as both maid and nanny. Early on in The Syringa Tree, Dr. Grace delivers Salamina's baby daughter Moliseng who, according to South African law, must be sent away to live with relatives in a black township. Yet she stays, not always successfully hidden from prying neighbors and police patrols, and her presence underscores the fear, danger and defiance that shaped so much of life in Johannesburg in 1963.
As solo shows go -- and there is only one performer bringing all of Gien's characters to life -- The Syringa Tree is hugely challenging.
Except for a child's swing hanging from the branches of an imaginary tree, there is no scenery. Though the characters talk about everything from a doll with a ruined dress to a massive pot of foul-smelling porridge bubbling on the fire outside the servants' quarters, there are no props. The scene depicting Moliseng's birth involves Dr. Grace, his wife, Salamina, Elizabeth and the newborn baby, and the performer must make the audience "see" everyone involved in one of life's most beautifully miraculous moments.
Tyler, who was obviously ailing with a cold or the flu on opening night, nonetheless impressively embodies everyone from the bursting-with-energy Elizabeth to a defiant teenaged Moliseng, hurling furious words during the deadly 1976 Soweto riots. Her voice climbs high and light for Elizabeth, low and hearty for Salamina. Her accents -- acquired in part during more than two months she spent working in an international Habitat for Humanity program in South Africa -- are impeccable. Spinning instantaneously from one person to the next, Tyler (simply dressed by costume designer Estela Vrancovich in a pale green T-shirt and long tan shift) uses movement, posture and gestures, along with her array of voices, to maintain moment-to-moment character clarity.
Still, she has immense and crucial help from her artistic collaborators. Director Joseph Adler has helped Tyler find the balance of child-like joy and dramatic intensity that the play requires. Without getting literal, set designer Tim Connelly provides a sense of place by stretching African fabric across the back of the stage and creating a "dirt" floor that would, we can tell, turn to aromatic mud with the first warm rain. Lighting designer Jeff Quinn supplies a haunting African moon, sound-music designer Michael J. Hoffmann a chorus of nighttime insects and the thunder of drums that echo Elizabeth's racing, tender heart.
As anyone who has seen the plays of Athol Fugard knows, there are more wrenching dramas about South Africa during the years of apartheid. But The Syringa Tree is a moving, personal portrait of a family bound by love and torn by tragedy.
Christine Dolen is The Herald's theater critic.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Syringa Tree: Play sees 40 years of racism
By Jack Zink, Theater Writer
Claire Tyler delivers one of the most affecting performances of the season in The Syringa Tree, a solo play that is a South African Our Town, at the GableStage in Coral Gables.
The 2000 off-Broadway drama reflects the dangerous, repressive society of Johannesburg in the final decades of apartheid. In the five years since its debut, Pamela Gien has won awards as both author and actress, and The Syringa Tree has earned the label "important."
So when the lights go up on Tyler, pushing herself on a swing almost over the front-row patrons and speaking in a childish, barely understandable South African accent, this bucolic portrait at first underwhelms the expectations fluttering just beyond Tyler's bare feet. But stay a moment, then another, for both Tyler's portrayals and Gien's voice to modify your viewpoint, and for their stories to wrap themselves around your heart.
Tyler recently spent several months in South Africa with Habitat for Humanity, in part to research the culture for her performance. The play opens with her as Lizzie, the young daughter of a white doctor. Eventually, Tyler will portray father Isaac as well, and mother Eugenie, their black servant Salamina and her daughter Moliseng, plus neighbors and townsfolk from the ruling white Afrikaaners to Zulus -- some two dozen characters, each with a vivid personality.
The story delineates the special bonds of friendship and respect among the white doctor's family and the "colored" employees at his gated residence. But almost from the start, The Syringa Tree illustrates the racism, oppression and potential for violence in the apartheid society of the 1960s, and their damaging effects on the individual.
The title refers to the tree to which young Lizzie's swing is attached, a large berry-producing shade tree, which is felt by Salamina and her fellow Xhosa to house the spirits of the dead. The story covers some 40 years up to and slightly beyond the end of the official apartheid government in South Africa in the early 1990s.
Gien's reflective, at times autobiographical tale is not inherently powerful drama. It is the theatrical choice of having a single actress perform all the roles that gives the play its substance. The Syringa Tree doesn't just create the characters; the play delivers them all to one place, to be sorted out by one compassionate soul.
Tim Connelly's set is a large cloth spanning the entire stage in vivid orange and speckled with various symbols, behind which Jeff Quinn's lighting and Michael J. Hoffman's sound offer the ambience of both the forest and the urban jungle. But The Syringa Tree depends ultimately upon a demanding, multihued performance of the stripe that director Joseph Adler has found in Tyler.
Jack Zink can be reached at jzink@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4706.
