Theater recommendation: The Syringa Tree at Jungle Theater

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Last night, some of us from my church, including mn9driver and Mrs. mn9driver, went to see the one-woman show The Syringa Tree at Jungle Theater.

Based on the life of playwright Pamela Gien, it portrays a young girl from a white English-speaking family growing up in South Africa in the 1960s, including the family's relations with their Afrikaner neighbors and black servants.

Sarah Agnew plays all the roles, adopting the body language, voices, accents, and speech patterns of all the characters, male and female, young and old, black and white.

It sounds confusing, but you always know who Agnew is supposed to be at any given moment, and the story is absorbing and emotionally involving. As time goes on, you see what happens to Elizabeth, the little white girl who plays on a swing attached to a syringa tree, and to Maliseng, the daughter of one of the black servants, a child whose very presence in the house is illegal.

The play runs through March 9 at Jungle Theater, located near the corner of Lake and Lyndale in Minneapolis. For ticket information see

https://www.ticketturtle.com/index.php?theatre=jungl