Toronto – Under the Mango Tree won Pick of the Fringe last year in Vancouver with a sellout run. This is a little surprising to me after seeing the show last night at the Toronto Fringe. Not to say it’s a poor show or anything, it just didn’t resonate with me the way I’d expect a “Best of Fringe” sort of show would.
It is entirely possible, I suppose, that as a second-generation Canadian, the story just didn’t strike a chord with me. Under the Mango Tree is, after all, an immigrant family’s tale: a single father in a poor village leaves the country seeking a better life, leaving behind his daughter, Timal, with her grandparents, promising to one day return and bring her back with him to Canada to live in prosperity. Set in Fiji, it’s semi-autobiographical, as the playwright and performer, Veenesh Dubois, emigrated from Fiji to Canada as a child, but not before being separated from her family for four years.
The growing disconnection between the character Timal and her father as they correspond by mail is interesting. Her father writes of selling popcorn to tourists on the streets, not wanting to be one of the stereotypical immigrants who drives too cautiously, and living in a flat. Timal, who lives in a small village and knows of little beyond it’s boundaries, doesn’t understand what he’s talking about, and asks whether the villages in Canada have sugar cane fields too. The show is solo-acted by Dubois; along with Timal, who ages from 10 to 16 during the course of the show, Dubois voices a few other characters as well, most often her grandmother, who she brings to life by wrapping a scarf around her head and holding her back as if it’s aching.
It’s a pretty good story, and it has a bittersweet ending after the rather saccharine-sweet beginning, when young Timal’s world was near-perfect. I didn’t feel a particular connection in any of this, though, and to me the narrative just sort of ground along to it’s inevitable conclusion. It’s ably acted by Dubois, who clearly put a great deal of herself into the show, and the characters are fairly well-written. It may just be a little too far outside my personal frame of reference as a white kid from small town Alberta to feel the kind of emotional resonance I would’ve needed to feel to give it a higher rating.
*Note that Under the Mango Tree is not the 90 minutes that your program indicates. It clocks in at a little under 60.