Curtain calls

“The Syringa Tree” The Pasadena Playhouse
Through Dec. 1 (626) 356-7529 3.5 Paws

Watching a fully-grown adult portray a young child onstage
usually has about as much appeal as a dog trained to dance in tap
shoes and a hat. Sure, it’s interesting and oddly cute at
first, but after a while it just seems sad.

Amazingly, actress and playwright Pamela Gien, in her one-woman
show, “The Syringa Tree,” manages to play 6-year-old
Elizabeth Grace without a single embarrassing moment.

The show is loosely based on Gien’s own life growing up in
South Africa. Gien portrays 23 other characters in addition to
Elizabeth, each with a distinct personality. The actress’
ability to transition seamlessly between characters while giving an
assured voice to each one is a feat deserving of every bit of
praise the show has received since its Seattle premiere in
1998.

However, Gien works so ardently through each character shift
that she often brings an out-of-breath quality to many of her
personas. With her flawless accents and commanding stage presence,
it is a wonder that director Larry Moss did not think to include
some pauses.

Unfortunately, Gien’s writing does not hold up as well as
her acting. The first two-thirds of the play tell a compelling
story of two families, one white and one black, struggling to get
by at the height of apartheid.

The last third, however, is a disappointing, highly sentimental
epilogue that serves only to allow a grown-up Elizabeth to flog
herself with the play’s obvious themes.

While “The Syringa Tree” falls short of a thoroughly
satisfying story, it delivers an exciting and ambitious
performance.

– Sommer Mathis

“Big Love” Pacific Resident Theatre Through
Dec. 15 (310) 822-8392 2 Paws

By this time, everybody and their uncles know that Greek
weddings are wild, wacky fun.

In the Pacific Resident Theatre’s “Big Love,”
an updated version of Aeschylus’ “The Suppliant
Women,” playwright Charles L. Mee provides a darker take on
the issues of ethnic tradition and marriage. The premise is
intriguing and the performances are strong, but the muddled script
and awkward pacing give an end result that is more confusing than
classic.

Directed by UCLA professor Mel Shapiro, the play about 40 Greek
sisters condemned to marry their 40 cousins at a mass wedding in
Egypt has been updated to include American cousins. The women
escape this fate on their wedding day. When the intended grooms
reclaim their betrothed, the brides conspire to murder their
husbands on the wedding night. And that’s where the fun
begins.

Or at least, that is where the fun could have begun, had the
playwright had any idea what kind of point he wanted to make about
marriage and tradition. Instead, we get the typical funny old
matriarch character with an accent and crotchety attitude, saying
things like, “I love-a my a-family” or
“I’m-a going-a to slap-a you, but-a I love-a you so
much-a.”

However, two actors stand out in their performances. Katy
Selverstone, as the man-hating Thyona tears up the stage like a
raptor on ephedrine, and Jason Huber provides a hilarious bit of
physical comedy as the nervous groom who cannot sit still in his
chair.

This adventurous Venice theater group makes a valiant attempt to
update an under-performed Greek classic, but if you only have time
for one Greek wedding this year, you should probably see the
movie.

– Scott Schultz