The Syringa Tree at the Olympia Theatre and Letting Go Of That Which You Most Ardently Desire at a secret location are reviewed.
The Syringa Tree
The syringa, common in South Africa, is a hardy tree noted for its scented flowers and berry crops, and it served as a memory trigger for Pamela Glen as she created this autobiographical play. The work expanded into fictional territory as the author was drawn to include her mature sense of the obscenity of apartheid, while the young girl depicted here naturally took for granted the ambience of her daily existence.
This is a solo play, in which the actress portrays more than 20 characters. It opens with six-year-old Lizzie playing on a swing, bubbling with little-girl talk. From this she segues into her mother, father and, most of all, her adored black nanny, Salamina. The latter's daughter Mollysan, at first a baby, becomes her close friend. Caroline Cave moves through these roles with great conviction, sketching them with minimal body movements and persuasive voice inflections.
Lizzie's parents are friends to their black employees and neighbours, ignoring apartheid laws that refuse black children the right to stay in white territory; they must be fobbed off to the townships, where aged grandparents must care for them. The girl knows vaguely about something called a "pass" that all blacks must have; it is part of their lives. As she grows up, troubling incidents occur, such as the temporary disappearance of Mollysan. Her paradise, not quite lost yet, is melting into a mirage.
A few more years, and Lizzie is away at school, learning some nasty home truths. Revolt erupts in the townships, and the 14-year-old Mollysan is killed while leading rioters. Freedom fighters attack her grandfather's home, and butcher him savagely. The faithful Salamina, unable to bear the shame of this crime, disappears and cannot be traced. Lizzie finally emigrates to America and marries there. A final visit to her still beloved Africa sees a moving reconciliation with Salamina.
The play has some limitations. Behind it lies the spectre of apartheid, but it is less than pervasive here, only a poorly-defined background to the story. One may, of course, argue that the author's focus was primarily on autobiography, but the balance between fact and fiction here is an imperfect one. There are also moments when the words given to Lizzie are inappropriately colourful, a touch of purple, for her age. But the play, and its actor, clearly merit the multiple awards bestowed on them. Until Sat. Gerry Colgan
Letting Go Of That Which You Most Ardently Desire
Our terms and conditions sounded more like a gagging order - no mobile phones, no cameras, no conversations while the event was in progress. Asked to refrain even from discussing the event until today, audiences for Far Cry's production of Gerard Mannix Flynn's Letting Go Of That Which You Most Ardently Desire understood that they were embarking on a "process" - if they understood anything at all. That word has few positive connotations in this country, but this was far more enticing: a piece of art presented as a civic duty, or, perhaps, vice versa.
Convening on a bus with blacked-out windows, Flynn sombrely informed us of our destination: an arms dump. If this prompted disbelief - that the dismantled remnants of the IRA's arsenal might be a bus ride away - the crumbling, musty edifice we later inspected aroused more suspicion. Doubt, however, is part of the process, raised and banished from room to room strewn with artefact and artifice. Rooms wallpapered with bunny targets, displaying an archer's bow or ranks of toy soldiers, suggested the whole thing may have been a joke. Beds of spent bullet cases guarded by balaclavas and soldier helmets, severed rifle butts and mounds of deconstructed handguns suggested it was anything but. Ushered briskly through the building, we the "citizens" had little time to process it.
The cluttered assembly of the site is nothing compared to a text later recited by Vincent McCabe. This, a sermon by the universal soldier, may have seemed an obvious counterpart to the earlier display but the speech is so dense and sporadic its effect ebbs steadily away. A thicket of references culled from history and mythology, pop culture and the daily news, the speech has a guiding theme but no guiding structure: it becomes unclear to us what binds the Mujihadeen to Cúchulainn, or a Spanish Civil War fighter to Odysseus. Frequently consulting a prompt script, it didn't seem too clear to McCabe either.
Flynn has attempted to extend an Irish dilemma rooted in history (the title refers to Wolfe Tone's request for an army from France) into a universal, timeless impulse towards violence. It's a valiant approach, but so all-encompassing it dilutes our engagement. Of arms and the man he sings, but while we accept the former can be put beyond use, the latter is harder to decommission. Run concluded Peter Crawley
