APT Offerings are worth a road trip to Spring Green

A review of The Syringa Tree and Waiting for Godot by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Michael Fischer. Spring Green - While their artistic directors may be reluctant to admit it, theater companies' growing addiction to one-person plays is often more about budget constraints than artistic merit. But as Colleen Madden proved at Renaissance Theaterworks five years ago, Pamela Gien's "The Syringa Tree" is an exception - at least when performed by an actor as talented as Madden herself. Teamed up again with director C. Michael Wright, Madden is back for seconds in American Players Theatre's intimate Touchstone Theatre space, which is featuring "The Syringa Tree" and Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" as its first two offerings. They're both worth a road trip from Milwaukee. Primarily set in a 1960s South Africa dominated by apartheid, the lone actor in "Syringa" must play 24 roles, ranging from a Xhosan baby to an 82-year-old white farmer. At their center is 6-year-old Lizzie, the white daughter of a liberal, atheist doctor and a cultured English mother - themselves misfits in an increasingly brutal and intolerant country. No adult actor inhabits childhood more fully than Madden, whose small frame, boundless energy, impishly expressive face and wide-eyed sense of wonder create a Lizzie who sees everything, even when she understands nothing. The adults surrounding Lizzie see less, but understand more. Madden gives each one a unique voice and accent, while using her body to convey how much more rigid they are than the free-wheeling, loose-limbed sprite moving among them. When Lizzie leaves childhood behind, "Syringa" loses its primary asset: the light that Lizzie's innocence sheds on the evil around her. In these waning moments, Gien tugs hard - too hard - at the heartstrings, leaving few dry eyes and no loose ends. But even this overly tidy and sentimental resolution cannot subtract from the miracle Madden has wrought. After her July 4 performance, an enthusiastic audience stood and demanded two additional curtain calls. Madden deserved both of them. Nathan Stuber's evocative scenic design - a multicolored tapestry in earthy tones that covers most of the stage before soaring upward as a backdrop - ingeniously embodies the beauty of South Africa, as well as the many stories and lives that Madden brings together. Liberating 'Godot' Nobody would ever accuse "Godot" of being overly tidy, but that hasn't kept a raft of academics from trying to reduce its radically deconstructive message to some readily digestible meaning. Kudos to director Kenneth Albers and a splendid cast for rejecting this well-traveled road and liberating "Godot" from the shackles of a definitive reading about how we're all doomed. In doing so, they have freed the audience to think for itself. Jim DeVita and James Ridge, playing the wandering tramps Gogo and Didi, show us the way. Rather than viewing this duo as hapless patsies awaiting the endlessly deferred arrival of the big cheese, we are encouraged to join them as audience members watching the performance of the play's second pair: the overbearing and blustery Pozzo (Brian Mani) and his abused and degraded servant, Lucky (John Pribyl). DeVita's Gogo is sure he can whip up something better. Using Ridge as his straight man, he duly turns each exchange into another routine in a nonstop variety show, featuring creative pantomime and intensely physical comedy. When a skit doesn't work, the tramps freely criticize it as boring or awful, transforming famous lines that are usually taken as metaphysical comments into an insistence that we stand up for the right to be entertained, learning how to laugh so that we can remember how to live. DeVita has always had a childlike, playful side, and his performances regularly break through the fourth wall and invite us to have fun with him. He is perfectly cast as Gogo. Ridge also makes a great Didi. Less playful than his buddy, he is more like most of us: He desperately wants it all to add up and make sense, and he has a harder time rolling with the punches when it doesn't. But his wistfully pursed mouth and slumping shoulders makes clear that deep down, he knows better than to ask for an answer. By the end of this "Godot," so do we. *** If you go "The Syringa Tree" continues through Oct. 16; "Waiting for Godot" continues through Oct. 17 at APT's Touchstone Theatre in Spring Green. Call (608) 588-2361 or visit americanplayers.org.