Review: The Secret Garden (Regent's Park Open Air Theatre)

Review by Sam Waite

⭐️⭐️⭐️

More than a century after it was first published, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden has been adapted seemingly endlessly – at least five films, ranging from 1910’s silent pictures to 2010’s sci-fi, three separate BBC adaptations by Dorothea Booking, radio broadcasts, an opera, multiple musicals and plays, even a 39-episode anime. Where many would assume audiences have had their fill by now, the novel’s enduring popularity explains its constant iterations, including a new stage play premiering at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.

The set up for this Secret Garden is familiar – Mary Lennox is moved from India to her uncle’s Yorkshire home after an outbreak of cholera leaves her an orphan. Contrary, used to bossing about the servants, and entirely used to her parents’ lack of interest in her, 10-year-old Mary struggle to adapt but finds herself won over by a friendly maid, a curious young outdoorsman, and mysteries surrounding a locked-away garden and a cousin she didn’t know was living upstairs. A major difference in this version, from Holly Robinson and Anna Himali Howard, is that both Mary and her sickly cousin Colin are biracial, her mother changed from a wealthy English woman living in her officer husband overseas to an Indian woman who fell in love with a member of this occupying class.

Re-working the family’s backstory provides some interesting touches – ever-contrary, Mary’s stubbornness in accepting her new life now carry more subtext, her otherness extending beyond her behaviour. This also allows Howard and Robinson to allude to just how sheltered Colin is, with his questioning if illness darkened her skin confusing Mary, who notes his is a very similar shade – without being told, we come to wonder if Colin has ever really seen himself, or if this is some imbedded prejudice rearing its head. Without spoiling the second act, this Secret Garden also has a much more modern attitude towards disabilities and long-term illnesses, doing away with the idea of a person being able to walk again as the truest sign of wellness.

Indeed, modern sensibilities are embedded throughout, for better or for worse. What appears at first to be accidental subtext between two characters of the same gender is eventually revealed to be entirely deliberate signs of their attraction – the setting seemingly having not moved drastically from the turn-of-the-century publication, the reactions to this are confusingly muted and accepting. No, I don’t want homophobia in my family-aimed theatre, but I might prefer these sensibilities to be a bit more openly used so as to not take me by surprise – especially given how fleeting and ultimately inconsequential this moment proves to be.

Still, most of what is new absolutely works – the cousins’ mothers’ Indian heritage is used to deepen and clarify Mary’s uncle’s moroseness and protectiveness over his only child, his having saved everything she brought to Yorkshire from her homeland and the room filled with these items – not a secret spot in the soil – being where the titular garden’s key is hidden. Leslie Travers has pulled together a charming set, where a simple stone wall moves back once Mary’s journey to England begins to reveal an open space completely at odds with the narrow, controlled strip of stage afforded by the wall’s initial placement nearer the lip of the stage. Stairs leading up to the stage are packed with soil and littered with the remnants of toys and dinnerware lost in the manor’s gardens, and a series of un-openable doors are wheeled about to create the illusion of Misselthwaite Manor’s endless expanses.

With the help of puppetry consultant Laura Cubitt and movement director Will Dickie, the various animals found in the manor’s gardens re brought to life by the cast. A simple red circle drawn on one performer’s palm quickly becomes a robin, flitting about and helping the youngsters unlock new secrets, while a black scarf and a pointed hand become a menacing but loveable crow. Combined with Travers’ moveable flower beds, including garlands and streamers used to represent the newly-growing plant life, these touches help to sell the expansiveness and beauty of Misselthwaite’s grounds without the need for overcomplicated scene changes. To keep the mood appropriate and clear, Jai Morjaria’s lightning design bathes the entire stage in varying hues to demonstrate wonderment, brightness, even the sunset over the grounds – no sooner had I thought what a thankless job lighting act one while it’s still light outside must be, than Morjaria’s first major change took place and left me in genuine wonderment.

Perhaps the most challenging to adapt to in an outdoor space, sound design from Tingying Dong largely ensures that we hear what we need to, when we need to. Yes, there are smatterings of giggles when birds in Regent’s Park caw over the silence before the robin speaks, and yes there was a touch of echoing periodically when two actors were close together and their mic’s picked up just a smidgen of the other actor’s voice. These things are certainly worth mentioning, but I must stress that they’re hardly the fault of Dong, or of anyone involved in The Secret Garden. Frankly, with the amount of background noise a summer’s eve in Regent’s Park brings, Dong ought to be commended simply for us being able to hear the dialogue from start to finish.

The ensemble cast, fronted by Hannah Khalique-Brown and Theo Angel as the cousins, are all likeable enough and hit their marks throughout. Unfortunately, The Secret Garden falls into a trap many classic works for children barrel into unwittingly – the barely-seen uncle is difficult to feel much empathy for when we spend no time getting to know him, and the other adults are merely there to be their designated archetype, be it a wise old man, a stern house manager, or a long-lost relative there to teach them how different their childhoods could be. While the other children, including a very funny Molly Hewitt-Richards as teen-maid Martha and a charming turn from Brydie Service, have more time to grow, they still end up largely as they began. Mary Lennox and Colin Craven learn to be nicer because that’s the message children needed (and perhaps still need) to learn, and while both actors sell the transition, theirs is the only major shift the expansive cast of characters goes through.

For fear of sounding too critical, of the play and of the novel, please know that I found myself delighted by much of The Secret Garden – again, the play and the book! This new version brings new shades to a long-beloved tale, and the immensely enjoyable ensemble of actors did wonderful work even with their arcs ending right where they began. Other stories may have richer emotional journeys, but it’s not hard to see why this one has been adapted time and time again. Even at its weakest moments (this one ends with a song… if you can call something seemingly without melody and only a handful of lines long a song) The Secret Garden continues to delight, and continues to teach children that there is more to enjoy in a life lived kindly than in one where your every whim is met with subservience. For an evening with your family on these warm summer evenings, you could certainly make much worse decisions.

The Secret Garden plays at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre until July 20th

For tickets and information visit https://openairtheatre.com/production/the-secret-garden

Photos by Alex Brenner