Meg Roe in The Syringa Tree
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The Syringa Tree is magic. As the audience stands as one entity, confident, deafening applause explodes in the theatre. Meg Roe swings her arms down in one final, aching flourish, and when she stands, proud and happy, tears of exhaustion glint in her eyes. A girl sitting next to me dashes for the exit, head down, program up to cover the black streaks of wet mascara running down her cheeks. I stood and pinched either side of my nose innocuously — and noticed most of the men around me doing the same. The effect is universal. Chests out, throats lumped, hands banging together repeatedly until they were raw and pink. Roe beams. We’re hers. Magic by any other name.
Alberta Theatre Projects’ second run of the quickly becoming famous performance is so close to perfect that any criticism of it would be petty, superficial or, moreover, focused on relatively unimportant elements of the production. No, The Syringa Tree is about Meg Roe, her supernatural charisma and unbelievable talent. Calling her “enchanting” would be a criminal understatement.
The story is told from the perspective of Elizabeth Grace, a privileged young white girl growing up in apartheid-era South Africa. The story also contains 22 other characters, all of which are played by Roe. A twirl, an identifying gesture with the hands and a slight inclination or declination with the neck to suggest the character's height and she becomes someone else. Not only is her Afrikaans accent pitch-perfect, but she moderates it with 22 distinct inclinations. With no costume changes or set to speak of, the effect is so convincing that it might cause some worry with mental health professionals.
The worry over this second production of The Syringa Tree was its similar excellence the first time around. Director Vanessa Porteous expressed some concern that the show may not live up to the audience’s memory, but judging from the reaction on opening night, that wasn’t a problem. Slight changes in the lighting and sound design seem to have been made since the first performance, but the effect is, for the most part, unnoticeable. The technical design is minimal as a rule, so that nothing distracts from Roe’s spellbinding performance.
The Syringa Tree has gotten better with age — two-and-a-half years may have been the perfect amount of time to wait. Still, Christmas wouldn’t be nearly as exciting if it came once a month, and so we should hope that ATP is able to resist the urge to produce and reproduce this massively popular show, lest it lose its bewitching charm.
