The Secret Garden ★★

The Secret Garden is one of those ‘90s musicals whose fate rather reflects its title. Bursting into life in 1991 on Broadway, although it did win 3 Tony Awards, it was kept rather in the shade by those super musicals that dominated theatres in the late ‘80s. While Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman’s show in parts shared similar bombast musically and an epic running time of two and a half hours, it lacked the spectacle of a Phantom or a Miss Saigon.

While the 2000 RSC production heavily revised it, the most dramatic pruning came with a 2023 revival that took 20 mins off it. That is until York Theatre Royal and director John Doyle got their sharpest secateurs out and lopped over an hour and an interval off the original. But would this version, performed by actor-musicians, bloom and grow?

Based on the 1911 Frances Hodgson Burnett novel, the story, such as it is, follows orphan Mary Lennox, sent to live in her uncle Archibald Craven’s gloomy Yorkshire manor after her parents die. Lonely and brattish at first, she discovers a locked, hidden garden that belonged to her late aunt, Lily. With the help of Dickon and her seemingly frail cousin Colin, Mary restores the garden, and as it begins to bloom, so do they. Colin gains strength and Mary finds belonging. Ultimately, the garden helps the grieving Archibald confront his loss, and the family finds healing, hope, and renewed connection.

In essence, there’s not a lot of ‘story’, but mood and thematic undercurrents become more important. The theme of displacement begins with Mary being torn from her life in India – but as that section is excised from the opening and reduced to some expositional dialogue, the sense of being uprooted begins to wither on the vine.

The notion of loss should permeate The Secret Garden, but beyond a sense of mournfulness in much of the music, it’s not explored much below the surface. Because we get no sense of her life before, it’s hard to tell if Estella Evans‘ Mary is sad about the loss of home and parents, if she’s entitled and obnoxious, or if she just doesn’t like Yorkshire. Her uncle Archibald (Henry Jenkinson, who sings beautifully but whose performance is one-note) wanders the manor in a repetitively dyspeptic grump. It’s hard to find any sense of sympathy for these unappealing characters who are locked so hard into their own inner life.

The idea of the healing power of nature is central to the novel and the musical but this never quite takes root in this adaptation. The titular garden is never visualised here. It’s a garden in the imagination of the audience, albeit one aided by some petals getting thrown about at key intervals. Yes, this garden really is that secret. Having the musician-actors ooh and ah and Johanna Town’s lighting state warm up none-too-subtly never quite renders this beauteous transformation of this garden from neglect to health. It requires rather too much heavy lifting from the audience.

The decision to make this a musician-actor production – for their musical talents are far more highlighted and relied upon than their acting skills – hems in the production. The entire ensemble sounds magnificent. There are moments of real beauty within the score. But the need to have most, if not all, of the cast on stage all the time, perched on scattered suitcases, reduces the performance area dramatically. It feels more like a concert version with gauze curtains rising and falling, rising and falling, than a fully rendered production.

Songs such as A Little Bit of Earth, Lily’s Eyes and Come To My Garden are lovely, in a very traditional way – Joanna Hickman, as Lily, singing the latter is particularly evocative, even when its many returns begin to wear out its welcome – but other forgettably bland numbers should be instantly mulched.

The 85-minute running time feels too short to let the sense of feeling truly take hold but also seems interminably long as the piece is so lacking in jeopardy and drama. The fault lies not with the talented cast, but this unsatisfying take on The Secret Garden should be kept hush-hush.