Gabriella Sundar Singh as Mary and Tama Martin as Robin in The Secret Garden.Michael Cooper/Shaw Festival
- Title: The Secret Garden
- Adapted for the stage by: Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli
- Director: Jay Turvey
- Actors: Gabriella Sundar Singh, Jacqueline Thair, Gryphyn Karimloo
- Company: Shaw Festival
- Venue: Royal George Theatre
- City: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
- Year: Runs to Oct. 13, 2024
Critic’s Pick
Another play with songs based on The Secret Garden?
I found it hard to hide my skepticism over the Shaw Festival premiering, this season, a new music-infused theatrical adaptation of British-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic 1911 children’s novel about an orphan who goes to live in her uncle’s country manor on the moors of Yorkshire.
After the beloved book first entered the public domain in United States in the 1980s, a series of Secret Gardens premiered in quick succession – including several musicals – all trying to wall in the market for a stage version.
Why add to that overgrown tangle – especially given the Tony-winning 1991 Broadway adaptation with music by Lucy Simon and book and lyrics by Marsha Norman came out so clearly on top, and is still regularly produced today?
Well, as it turns out, Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli had some great ideas for how to bring The Secret Garden to the stage; the pair have created an utterly charming and ultimately very moving family show interwoven with traditional tunes such as Scarborough Fair and Blue Bells, Cockle Shells, accompanied by an unseen quintet of musicians.
Some may view their version as quiet and old-fashioned, especially compared with the operatic bombast of the Simon/Norman musical.
But others will see it, as I did, from another angle – as the right up-to-date recipe for those seeking mindful rather than noisy and busy entertainment for kids.
Mary Lennox arrives in England as a 10-year-old girl who has lost both her parents.Michael Cooper/Shaw Festival
The plot is kept to its simplest strokes: Mary Lennox (Gabriella Sundar Singh), a 10-year-old girl, has lost both her parents, as well as the servants who really raised her in India, all to cholera.
She arrives in England, bristly and spoiled and in mourning, to live with her uncle Archibald Craven (David Alan Anderson). She barks at her Yorkshire maid Martha (Jacqueline Thair) at first, but gradually warms to her and all the thees and thys of her dialect.
Confined to her room at night, and tossed outside to play alone in the daytime, Mary’s world grows as her spirit does owing to fresh air and exercise.
As the seasons shift from winter to summer, the girl befriends the gardener Weatherstaff (David Adams), Martha’s kind brother Dickon (Drew Plummer) and a robin red-breast (played by Tama Martin, manipulating a simple puppet as she bobs across the stage, and a flautist in the orchestra pit).
Spoiler alert for children who haven’t read the book – and adults who have forgotten it: Mary eventually learns that her uncle’s estate includes a walled garden locked since his wife died in it – and also a bedridden cousin, Colin (Gryphyn Karimloo), who has been shut up most of his life in his room with an unnamed condition.
Colin is even more dyspeptic than Mary, but there’s nothing wrong with either that a little rolling up your sleeves and getting down in the dirt can’t solve.
Now I see that it does make sense for the Shaw Festival to create its own version of The Secret Garden in-house. The theatre company’s namesake, Bernard Shaw, shared early 20th century values with Burnett, such as a skepticism of medical doctors, and a belief that cool baths, taking the air and country walks were the foundations of good health.
From left to right: David Alan Anderson as Dr. Craven, Gryphyn Karimloo as Colin, Gabriella Sundar Singh as Mary and Drew Plummer as Dickon.Michael Cooper/Shaw Festival
These sensible-enough sentiments could (and sometimes did) curdle into something more sinister – like Shaw’s anti-vaccination views, or blaming the ill or disabled for their conditions.
But Turvey and Sportelli smartly put a line or two in their script to make clear that Colin’s case is an individual one, rather than one meant to represent all sick kids, and that the garden cure isn’t for all.
True to the themes of Burnett’s tale about the healing power of nature and the simple things in life, Turvey and movement director Linda Garneau use humble physical theatre techniques and ensemble work, rather than expensive special effects, to tell their story. A set of rolling door frames, for instance, is moved about by the ensemble to create the sense of endless corridors – or a hall full of disapproving portraits.
Beyata Hackborn’s set design is itself simple but beautiful, gradually transforming the proverbial empty stage into a lush summer garden, with an assist from Kevin Lamotte’s emotive lighting.
An excellent ensemble is anchored by Sundar Singh’s strong performance as Mary, in which the actress puts her trademark blunt delivery to excellent use to portray the innocent confidence of youth.