THE SECRET GARDEN
*** (out of 5)
Royal George Theatre, 2 hours 15 minutes. Ends Oct. 13. Writer: Frances Hodgson Burnett. Adapted by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli. Director: Jay Turvey. A play with songs.

Penny-Lynn Cookson
Special to The Lake Report

Mystery and magic are in the very words and idea of a “secret garden.” We want to know more. Where is it? What’s in it? Why is it a secret?

So, the Shaw Festival’s decision to create a new version of this much loved, classic children’s story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1909 seems an appropriate choice for our garden obsessed Niagara-on-the-Lake.

So how does this “Secret Garden” grow? Fitfully.  

The promise is all there in the fresh shoots of spring appearing after the barren winter, but the expected blaze of summer blossoms is not. Nature’s glory is visually lacking.

The expectation of this reality is superseded by a demand on our imagination. We will have to work harder in this garden because the rewards are not immediately obvious.

Mary Lennox, aged 10, is a spoiled, unhappy child living in India, whose neglectful British parents have left her in the care of servants.

She awakens one morning to silence. Her parents and nanny are dead of cholera, the servants fled. She is alone.

Mary (Gabriella Sundar Singh) is sent to England to live with her widowed uncle, Archibald Craven (David Alan Anderson).

She is met by the no-nonsense housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock (a crisp Sharry Flett) and transported by train and carriage (both brilliantly choreographed) to Misselthwaite Manor, a 600-year-old grand house on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors.

Although confined to her rooms and instructed not to explore the house of 100 rooms and closed doors, Mary can play outdoors. She meets the brusque but kind gardener, Ben Weatherstaff (David Adams), from whom she learns of the walled secret garden. 

He teaches her to gently befriend Robin Redbreast (Tama Martin) who helps Mary to find the key to the locked gate.

Mary is liberated. She wants to bring the desolate garden back to life after 10 years of neglect. A sensitive village lad, Dickon (Drew Plummer), who charms the animals and birds and knows much about nature will help. Together with spade, pruning, digging and seeds, they restore the roses and garden. 

Cries in the house heard by Mary are met by denial by servants as “the wind.” She investigates along long corridors whose walls hold ancestral family portraits, cleverly presented by the actors standing within picture frames.

Mary discovers a bedridden boy of 10, whose fearful screams, tantrums and hysterics have led to his isolation and misery.  He is Colin (powerfully played by Gryphyn Karimloo).

He is her cousin, neglected by his father and believing he is going to die. Mary has a new goal, save Colin. Get him outside, to the garden, which will restore his health!

Mary’s young maid Martha (Jacqueline Thair) and Mrs. Sowerby (Patty Jamieson), intervene to have Mr. Craven return from his constant travels to Misselthwaite Manor. 

Drawn to the garden where his  beloved wife fell, thereafter dying in childbirth, he is astonished to see his son who has the grey eyes of his mother, walking toward him. They embrace and reunite. Joy and happiness abound.

Although the wait for a profusion of roses, daffodils, snowdrops and lilies was futile, we were rewarded by the vastness of the Yorkshire Moors beyond the glass windows and the play of light suggesting the dark purple black and grey of winter and the soft blue of spring.

Traditional British songs, played by the Musical Quintet, featured many nature songs such as “Blue Bells, Cockle Shells,” “May Garland” and “I Sowed the Seeds of Love.”

Costumes designed by Judith Bowden thoughtfully display leaves and flowers. Mrs. Medlock’s dark suits emphasize her stern personality.

One wishes the animals and robin to have been more lifelike. In myth, Robin Redbreasts are the messengers of lost loved ones. They are small, fluffy, with big eyes and red bibs. They are not white pterodactyls.

Dickon’s cub fox has a sweet head but the body of a deflated airport windsock. The baby lamb taken for Colin to bottle-feed looked plastic. The focus of the children in the audience was unaltered, so imagination is clearly more accepting with this age group than with their elders.

What we experienced was how the friendship of children from disparate backgrounds working together came to understand themselves and others through fortitude and a love of nature.

It is a story of death, loss, relocation and isolation overcome by resilience and a belief in magic. The garden’s rebirth and restoration enabled the recovery of a family nearly destroyed by death and loss. All were united through the transformational power of nature and the magic of the secret garden.

As Colin said, “Even if it isn’t real magic we can pretend it is. Something is there — something.”  

And that is the enduring magic of theatre — isn’t it?

Penny-Lynn Cookson is an arts and culture historian, writer and lecturer living in Niagara-on-the-Lake.