A tour-de-force solo drama. It’s a love story, really, about the strong, lasting bond between a white girl and her black nanny in South Africa — emotionally powerful without being overtly political; audiences regularly emerge from the theater crying.
~The New Yorker
I was a puddle from about midway through the very end (which I either didn’t like much or missed out on due to intense muffled sobbing) and barely pulled myself together enough to enjoy a fine glass of South African shiraz post-show at Casablanca.
Having received comp tickets (as a performer in the ART’s recent performance of O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms) Richard Gilman took us to see award-winning play (the OBIE Award for Best Play of 2001, the Drama Desk Award, the Drama League Award, and the Outer Critic’s Circle Award) The Syringa Tree by Pamela Gien at the ART. Gin Hammond performed the lead roles — all 24 — in this one-woman play in which the tree — our theatre space itself — is a magical sanctuary for white, 6-year old Lizzie, an innocent witness to South Africa under apartheid. For her black nanny, it is a hideaway from the police and a home for the dead, who remain in its limbs. Viewing this perspective of apartheid through the non-judgmental and yet clear eyes of a child is so incredibly powerful, and it’s carried off without any cloying affectation or drooling fantasies of what a 6 year old is all about. I found the violence and suffering described in the words of a 6-year old to be so tremendously moving and poignant.
Although largely fiction, the play is based on two true events from the author’s life. Ms. Gien’s grandfather was murdered on his farm when she was ten years old. The second event was the birth and subsequent concealment of her nanny’s child. Although there are twenty-four characters in the play, all of them played by Ms. Gien, The Syringa Tree is mostly told through the eyes of six-year-old Elizabeth. “It was never my intention to perform it alone. I wrote it as a story to be performed by other actors,” says Ms. Gien. The idea to do the play as a one-woman show came from its director, Larry Moss. “I thought he was completely insane. I thought he probably hadn’t really read it.” Of course, Mr. Moss had read it, and he believed that it would be possible for Ms. Gien to embody all the characters and tell the whole story alone.
Thank you, Richard!!!