Before heading to Broadway, ‘The Secret Garden’ needs fertilizer
Producers hope to bring "The Secret Garden" back to Broadway with a starry cast but a gloomy set.
The Rundown
Center Theatre Group hopes to bring The Secret Garden back to Broadway, but the beloved 1991 musical featuring music by Lucy Simon and book and lyrics by Marsha Norman may need some TLC before it’s replanted.
Based on the novel by Frances Hodson Burnett, the musical follows orphaned Mary Lennox (Emily Jewel Hoder) after the death of her parents in early 20th-century India due to cholera. The girl is sent to her uncle Archibald’s (Derrick Davis) estate in North Yorkshire, England — a dismal mansion with equally depressed occupants, including Archibald’s sickly son (Reese Levine) and brother Neville (Aaron Lazar), a doctor enlisted to care for the bed-ridden boy.
The Secret Garden faces a theatrical legacy that is difficult to make anew. While some efforts deliver a more culturally nuanced telling, the ghosts of production past loom in the rafters.
No Tea, No Shade
Director/choreographer Warren Carlyle, who recently staged The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman, told the Los Angeles Times, “I want it to be beautiful, haunting and culturally correct.”
Two out of three ain’t bad.
Haunting it is. Simon’s score, rich with sweeping ballads and forlorn lyrics, tackles the complexities of grief as characters struggle to find their way out of the dark cloud of mourning. Mary for her parents. Archibald for his wife. Neville for unrequited love.
Out of this grief, sparks of hope emerge. Mary befriends chambermaid Martha (Reese Levine) and Mary’s brother, Dickon (John-Michael Lyles, A Strange Loop), who has a way with the land and animals and encourages her connection to nature.
Ghosts, costumed in white by Ann Hould-Ward, sweep in and out (occasionally staged to walk backward, precarious for those in floor-length gowns), struck with spotlights and the wisp of a red scarf to indicate their passing.
References to Mary’s life in the British Raj are addressed, including changes to the script and score and the engagement of language coach Perviz Sawoski and dialect coach Joel Golde.
“India is not a homogeneous entity by any means — there are 300 languages, there are regions that are drastically different from each other,” Sawoski told the Los Angeles Times. “But I think the final result of this iteration is much more tasteful and accurate.”
While these updates deliver a more accurate and culturally sensitive production, The Secret Garden’s stark design fails to evolve with its characters’ emotional journey. Jason Sherwood’s scenic design looms in blackness. The action centers around a wuthering spiral that looks more like a giant napkin ring (or, as my guest suggested, a large intestine) than the uprooting of the earth. The garden the audience craves Mary to bring back to life wilts when revealed.
Let’s Have a Moment
Derrick Davis’s simmering performance as Archibald Craven captures the grief of losing a loved one. In the musical’s final moments, he faces Lily’s apparition, and together they sing “How Could I Ever Know.” Boggess brings a luminescent quality to Lily (not unlike the role’s originator, the late great Rebecca Luker); her effortless soprano (featured in the 25th-anniversary production of The Phantom of the Opera) stirs with emotion, fueled by Marsha Norman’s lyrics that express the fragility of time:
How could I know I would never hold you?
Never again in this world
But oh, sure as you breathe I am there inside you
How could I ever know?
The Last Word
If The Secret Garden transfers to Broadway, who will go? The original production ran a respectable 709 performances and won three Tony Awards. The score, featuring additional arrangements by Rob Berman, is captivating.
The family-friendly musical, due in large part to its foreboding and gloomy physical presence, fails to break through with the optimism it promises. The production features outstanding vocal performances from a roster of Broadway veterans, including its young lead. Still, director-choreographer Carlyle, known for his bigger-than-life productions, has yet to harness the musical’s emotional complexity. And that is a secret worth discovering.
The Secret Garden plays at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles through March 26, 2023.
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