For the Locals: Go See The Syringa Tree

Because seeing a bad play is, like, twenty times worse than seeing a bad movie, I’m pretty picky about the theatre I attend. I go to maybe twelve shows a year. Most are mediocre, a few are awful, and one or two are usually great. Pamela Gien’s The Syringa Tree falls into this latter category. Here’s the blurb:

Vancouver audiences are eagerly anticipating the return of The Syringa Tree to the Playhouse stage on March 31. The deeply evocative story of an abiding love between two families, one black and one white, and the two children that are born into their shared household in the early 1960s South Africa was a smash hit last season, and was held over for a week to accommodate demand for tickets.

It’s a wonderful play–lyrical, moving, joyful–all the best things that live theatre has to offer. I saw the play last fall with the playwright as the performer, but Caroline Cave is supposed to excellent as well. She went to UVic with me for a year, but she was clearly destined for greater things.

The Vancouver Playhouse has a ‘trailer’ for the play on their website. It’s WMV, and in a silly little popup window. I moved it over to YouTube, where it belongs. The tone of the trailer is, frankly, more somber than I remember the play being, but beggars can’t be choosers. It’s not like theatre companies have been posting much production video to the web up to now:

If you’ll permit my whinging for a moment, here’s yet another instance of Wikipedia’s geek bias. Pamela Gien is a playwright and a theatre, TV and film actor, and she’s performed all over the world. Do you think she’s got a Wikipedia entry? The same goes for Caroline Cave, who’s done a fair chunk of TV work.