The Secret Garden review – The classic children’s novel remade into a haunting musical | stage

IIn this version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s book, the garden that bears her name is nowhere to be seen. York Theater Royal’s revival of Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon’s musical begins with the stage covered in dust sheets, setting the tone for what comes next. This is a bleak interior space, full of ghosts and secrets, where young newcomer Mary Lennox finally begins to shed some light.

Norman’s adaptation shifts the focus away from Mary and her young companions to the adults in the story: Mary’s tormented uncle and guardian Archibald Craven, his conflicted brother Neville, and the abiding spirit of his beloved dead wife Lily, whose walled garden Mary discovers and brings back to life. It offers a darker, more dramatic telling of the story, accompanied by Catherine Jayes’ atmospheric arrangements of Simon’s music. Actor-musician director John Doyle’s production adds to the sense of ghosts watching from the walls of Misselthwaite Manor, with the multi-talented players constantly on the periphery of the scenes.

But what is lost here is the magic of Mary’s transformation under the influence of nature. The only suggestion of the world beyond the palace walls in Doyle and David L. Arsenault’s set design is a series of rising and falling muslin sheets printed with an impression of Yorkshire Moors. Everything else is up to the imagination. This may be a reference to the story’s literary origins, which are reinforced by the choice of Mary wearing modern dress and carrying a copy of the book – although these references to reading and to the contemporary world are never taken into account.

Meanwhile, the truncated storytelling allows for little more than fleeting snippets between Mary and the various characters she encounters: the kindly servant Martha, Martha’s animal-whispering brother Dickon, the devoted master gardener Ben and Archibald’s sickly reclusive son Colin. Although there are well-performed tender moments with each, the action jumps from song to song and scene to scene with little sense of development in between – not helped by the often static theatrics. The overall effect is dreamlike: full mood, little drama.