The Syringa Tree

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

When Alliance Stage opened last February with Pamela Gein’s play The Syringa Tree starring Karen Slack, I didn’t think it would be possible to be knocked out with the story and Slack’s incredible performance any more than I was then.

Karen Slack portrays 24 characters in The Syringa Tree at the Avenue Theater.

How wrong I was.

On its third run since last February, The Syringa Tree opened last weekend at the Avenue Theatre. Even though you may have seen it at the Buntport Theatre and/or Littleton’s Town Hall, in the warm intimate setting of the Avenue, Slack digs deeper into the characters, and into the rich mind-boggling story.

With 24 choreographed characters living, and trying to live, in South Africa during Apartheid, Slack slips smoothly in and out of each character with profound definition. Her artistic expertise carries her instantly from six year old Elizabeth Grace, known as Lizzie, and to some as Monkey, to Salamina, the Grace’s family maid, to her mother, Eugenia, to her father Dr. Isaac Grace, to Peter Mombadi, the Grace family driver, to Granny Elizabeth, and Grandpa George, to Dominee (Catholic Priest), to Zephyr the Loeska’s family gardener, to a Baragwanath hospital matron with high strung emotional intensity. Not only does Slack play old and young, black and white, she conveys distinguished representatives from Xhosa to Afrikaans to Zulu to Jewish, revealing each character’s meticulous complexities.

On a near bare stage except for a wooden swing and five burlap panels hanging upstage, Slack dressed simply in a long skirted tan jumper, a dark brown short sleeve tee shirt, and bare feet, paints a detailed portrait of each character. Showing heart and soul mixed with hope, fear, anxiety, pride, and dignity of each one Slack disappears into elementary facets of children, babies, gnawed and crippled elderly, adults of all ages with the gambit of emotions pinned to their shoulders.

The swing hangs from the Syringa tree, although so prevalent in the play, the imagination paints its own portrait, and the mind’s eye swears the tree actually supports the swing. The African tree, a lilac relative, alternates with fragrant star-shaped flowers and poisonous red berries finds strength in shade and scorching sun. This particular tree becomes a magical refuge for the six-year-old white girl living in South Africa during Apartheid, a secret hiding place from police for her Black nanny, and a place for ancestral spirits to play among its limbs.

Because of the pain involved living under Apartheid, the revolution that destroyed the lives of several young people, and wanting to see the world, Gien received an Honors degree at the University of Whitwatersrand in Dramatic Art and English, and studied at the Jacques Lecog School in Paris. She returned to South Africa and worked with a small theatre group. A few years later, she and her husband moved to the United States, “the land of the brave and home of the free.” As an exercise, a Professor asked his acting class to turn to the person next to them and tell a story. They were not to censor their initial thoughts. Gien began telling her story living in South Africa on her grandfather’s farm, telling a story she had deliberately not thought about in some time. Coming face to face with memories she had been oh, so silent about concerning a land she dearly loved, The Syringa Tree began its journey down the birth canal into life and reality.

A deeply personal story, The Syringa Tree straddles four generations in the 1960s with an unshakable love between two families: one white, one black, and the two children born into their shared South African household in the early 1960s. Mostly fiction, the play includes two events that happened in Gien’s life. Her Grandfather was murdered on his farm when she was 10 years old, and the birth and concealment of her Nanny’s baby. The characters are a composite of people she knew.

A story where in South Africa, blacks had to be registered with police, they had to have a pass, an identity document, with them at all times. Particularly when they ventured into white areas. Babies were confiscated from their black mothers as soon as they were born. Whites dominated South Africa from 1947 until riots broke out in 1976 just outside Johannesburg. Hundreds of blacks were killed. Among them was Moliseng, Salamina’s daughter, the little girl child Lizzie knew so well.

A deeply personal story captured in the mind of Gien, that needs to be heard, needs to be experienced by every thinking human being on earth. Would that all of history, or at least a goodly portion of it, could be taught in such a personal manner. Would that all history classes from elementary through college could arrange to take their classes to the Avenue Theatre for a taste of history beyond names dates, and places. Would that Slack’s incredible journey into the heart and soul of South Africa inspire additional personal historical stories. What a way to teach history. What a difference it could make. What kinds of impact for this medium to have on, oh, say, Iraq? When do we learn what Lizzie’s Father knew so long ago when he reminds her, “Every place is part of you, my Lizzie, and you’re part of every place. We’re all just part of the earth, and we carry one another with us … Wherever we go … for all time….”

Alliance Theatre’s Christopher Willard who directed Slack in this place out did himself in connection with his muse, as did Tina Anderson who designed the set in complex simplicity, Jacob M. Welch who designed the lighting giving eerie reality to time and space, and Nicole M. Harrison-Hoof who designed the costume. Not enough can be said for Slack who climbed emotionally inside 24 characters bringing them to life once more. Once the play was successfully mounted in February, it could have continued untouched. It was a winner then. Slack and Willard wouldn’t and couldn’t leave it alone. They continued refining, delving deeper into the content of the play and deeper into the characteristics and characters of the 24 member cast. It is now a dance of life, for life and with life.

In 2001, The Syringa Tree won the Obie Award for Best Play, Drama Desk Award, Drama League Award, and Outer Critics’ Circle Award, and in 2005 Slack won the won the hearts of everyone who experienced her performance in this extraordinary production.