The Secret Garden (musical)


The Secret Garden is a musical based on the 1911 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The musical's script and lyrics are by Marsha Norman, with music by Lucy Simon. It premiered on Broadway in 1991 and ran for 709 performances.
The story is set in the early years of the 20th century. Mary Lennox, a young English girl born and raised in the British Raj, is orphaned by a cholera outbreak when she is ten years old. She is sent away from India to live in the manor of a brooding uncle she has never met in Yorkshire, England, where her personality blossoms among the other residents of the manor as they bring new life to a long-neglected garden.

Productions

The musical had its world premiere at the Wells Theatre, Norfolk, Virginia, in a Virginia Stage Company production, running from November 28, 1989 to December 17, 1989. Direction was by R.J. Cutler, with scenic design by Heidi Landesman, lighting by Peter Kaczorowski and costumes by Martin Pakledinaz.
The Secret Garden premiered on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on April 25, 1991, and closed on January 1993, after 709 performances. The musical was directed by Susan H. Schulman with choreography by Michael Lichtefeld. The cast featured Daisy Eagan as Mary Lennox, Mandy Patinkin, Rebecca Luker, Robert Westenberg and John Cameron Mitchell. It won the 1991 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical, Best Featured Actress in a Musical, and Best Scenic Design. Eagan at age 11 was the youngest female recipient of a Tony Award. The set resembled an enormous Victorian toy theatre with pop-out figures, large paper dolls, and Joseph Cornell-like collage elements. Costumes were by Theoni V. Aldredge, who was nominated for the Tony Award, Best Costume Design.
The wardrobe is on display at the Costume World Broadway Collection in Pompano Beach, Florida.
The musical was produced in Australia in 1995 in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. Directed by Schulman and with sets by Landesman, the cast starred Philip Quast as Neville Craven and Anthony Warlow as Archibald Craven.
A heavily revised Royal Shakespeare Company production ran at Stratford from November 13, 2000 until January 27, 2001, with Philip Quast and Meredith Braun and directed by Adrian Noble, staged and choreographed by Gillian Lynne. The RSC production transferred to the West End Aldwych Theatre, running from February 2001 until June 2001.
The Secret Garden was produced in a limited run by Lamplighters Music Theatre in San Francisco, CA, USA, from January 18 to February 3 in 2008. The production was the first reconstruction of the original Broadway score since the piece's original opening in New York in 1991. The San Francisco production was mounted with notes from Lucy Simon's personal libretto from the original Broadway production, and was noted as being so close to the original Broadway production that the production fell under copyright jurisdictions, and public viewing permissions of footage of the production was not granted to the company.
The Secret Garden was produced by Mirvish Productions at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto from February 13, 2011 to March 19. The production was originally produced at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Secret Garden returned to the West End for 6 weeks in July and August 2016 at the Ambassadors Theatre with a company of child actors, directed by Rupert Hands.
Washington DC's Shakespeare Theatre Company, in collaboration with Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre, presented the musical from November 15, 2016, to January 8, 2017, directed by David Armstrong. Michael Kahn noted that this production is "an active reworking" of the musical. Daisy Eagan returned to the show as the chambermaid Martha, with Anya Rothman as Mary, Michael Xavier as Archibald Craven, and Josh Young as Dr. Neville Craven. The production has revisions which include new songs, deletions and re-arranging, but overall it condenses and streamlines the story to a shorter running time under Norman and Simon's involvement. In early 2017, it was announced that the production would transfer onto Broadway. The production performed at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle from April 14 to May 6, 2017 and at the Theatre Under the Stars in Houston,Texas from October 10–22, 2017, and had plans to go to other theatres across North America before going to Broadway; however, the production's timeline has since been canceled.
On February 12, 2018, it was announced that the first Broadway revival will be presented during the 2018-2019 season. The director/choreographer is expected to be Warren Carlyle, with cast, theatre and other details to be announced. A lab production will be held from May 19, 2018 to June 8 prior to the Broadway revival, directed by Warren Carlyle. Taking part in the developmental production are, among others, Sierra Boggess as Lily, Matt Doyle as Albert, Drew Gehling as Neville, Clifton Duncan as Archibald and Brooklyn Shuck as Mary. The revival did not come to pass in the 2018-2019 season and there has been no further word on the project. When Warren Carlyle was interviewed by Ken Davenport for The Producer's Perspective Podcast in May 2019, he revealed that the revival is still on the table. They have a cast lined up, they're just waiting for the right theatre to be available.
In August 2019, it was announced that Opera Australia and the Gordon Frost Organisation would stage the 25th anniversary production, again directed by Susan H. Schulman, opening in Sydney in August 2020, with a Melbourne season to follow. It was also further announced that Anthony Warlow would be reprising his role as Archibald Craven.

Concerts

The Secret Garden was The Third Annual World AIDS Day Benefit Concert, held on December 5, 2005, at the Manhattan Center Studios Grand Ballroom, New York City, directed by Stafford Arima and produced by Jamie McGonnigal. The cast featured Laura Benanti as Lily, Steven Pasquale as Archie, Will Chase as Neville, Celia Keenan-Bolger as Martha, David Canary as Ben, Jaclyn Neidenthal as Mary, Struan Erlenborn as Colin, Max von Essen as Albert, Sara Gettelfinger as Rose, and Michael Arden as Dickon. The cast also included Matt Cavenaugh, Jenny Powers, Ben Magnuson, Shonn Wiley, Reshma Shetty, Deborah S. Craig, Nehal Joshi, and Kate Shindle, with Barbara Rosenblat returning to the role she created, Mrs. Medlock.
Manhattan Concert Productions presented a concert production of The Secret Garden at Lincoln Center for two nights on February 21 and 22, 2016, with Sydney Lucas starring as Mary Lennox. She was joined by the original "Mary Lennox", Daisy Eagan, who now plays the role of Martha, and Barbara Rosenblat, returning to her original role of Mrs. Medlock. Also in the cast were Ramin Karimloo as Archibald Craven, Sierra Boggess as Lily, Cheyenne Jackson as Neville Craven, Ben Platt as Dickon, Jere Shea as Ben, Oscar Williams as Colin Craven, Nikki Renée Daniels as Rose, Josh Young as Captain Albert Lennox and Telly Leung as Fakir.
Rebecca Luker appeared in a benefit concert for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Metro New York and Western New York at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on January 11, 2016. The concert was originally scheduled to be one night only, but a second performance was added for January 17, 2016. Daisy Eagan, the original "Mary Lennox" was the host for the concerts.
The Secret Garden was presented in Toronto, Canada, in January 2017 as the inaugural show of a newly formed theatre company Podium Concert Productions, headed by Producer Peter da Costa and Conductor Mark Camilleri.
In February 2019, The Secret Garden was presented by the Virginia Stage Company in the Norfolk Botanical Gardens in a concert to celebrate the Company's 40th anniversary. This was the first time that The Secret Garden has been staged there since the World Premiere in 1989.

Synopsis

This synopsis describes the original Broadway production; the reworked London production altered this sequence by moving or omitting several scenes and songs.

Act I

Mary Lennox, a 10-year-old English girl who has lived in India since birth, dreams of English nursery rhymes and Hindi chants. She awakes to learn that her parents and nearly everyone she knew in India, including her Ayah, have died of cholera. She is discovered by survivors of the epidemic.
Mary is sent to live in England with her mysterious uncle Archibald Craven, a reclusive hunchback who has spent years grieving the death of his wife, Lily. Due to Archibald's introversion, the management of his manor house, Misselthwaite, is largely left to his manipulating brother, Dr. Neville Craven. The housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, coldly welcomes Mary to Yorkshire on her arrival. Due to Archibald and Mary's lingering grief, the house is haunted by ghosts from their pasts. Lonely and misbehaving, Mary despises her new surroundings and has difficulty sleeping her first night there, hearing echoes of crying voices. The next morning, Mary meets Martha, a young chambermaid who encourages Mary to go play outside by telling her about the surrounding moorland and grounds, in particular, a hidden garden. Archibald does not meet Mary, but remains submerged in his ghostly memories of Lily.
Mary explores the walled garden, laid out in Victorian style as a topiary maze, where she encounters the old gardener Ben Weatherstaff and Martha's brother Dickon. Ben tells Mary that the secret garden has been locked since Lily's death, as it reminds Archibald of her. The mystical Dickon invokes the spring in a rustic druid-like fashion; he claims to converse with animals and teaches Mary to speak the Yorkshire dialect to a robin, which guides Mary to the garden's secret key.
Archibald and Mary finally meet, and Mary asks him for nothing but a bit of earth to plant a garden of her own; he is startled by the simple modesty of the request and compares her to Lily for their shared horticultural interests. As the Yorkshire gloom turns to a fearsome storm, Archibald and his brother Neville both notice that Mary shares physical resemblances to her aunt Lily, with whom both men were in love. Mary again hears crying, but this time she uncovers its source: Colin, a secret cousin of hers confined to bed since his birth, when his mother Lily died. Colin has been in bed his entire life because Archibald, his father, feared that Colin would also become a hunchback, likely influenced by Neville's deceptive medical advice. Colin confides in Mary his nightly dreams of a man who comes to him and reads from a magical book. However, just as Mary and Colin embrace their new yearned-for companionship, Neville and Mrs. Medlock burst in and angrily tell her she is never to see Colin again because of his fragile medical condition. As the storm reaches its peak, Mary runs outside and, discovering the hidden door to the garden, she inserts the key.

Act II

Mary has a reverie about the exciting new privacy afforded to her by the garden. Much like both Mary's uncle and Mary herself, the garden is neglected and half-wild. Neville's musings are darker: recalling his unrequited love for Lily, Neville wants Archibald to leave Misselthwaite entirely to him. The two brothers' thoughts are interwoven with ghostly echoes of old arguments between Lily and her sister Rose about Archibald's suitability as a prospective husband and father. At Neville's urging, the melancholy Archibald leaves for Paris, pausing only to warmly read a fairy tale to Colin as the boy sleeps. Thus, the "round-shouldered man" is not a dream at all but merely Colin's own father, who, despite his emotional devastation, still deeply loves his son.
Mary asks Dickon for help with the garden, which seems dead; Dickon explains that it is probably just dormant and that, with some assistance, it will grow. Mary tells Colin about the discovered garden, but he is initially reluctant to go outside until encouraged by an inviting vision of his mother. Mary, Dickon, and Martha clandestinely bring Colin to the garden in a wheelchair. In the garden, the exercise, fresh air, and magical incantations in both Hindi and English led by Mary, the ghosts, and the manor staff strengthen Colin, allowing him to rise from his wheelchair for the first time, as the onlookers sing the praises of the renewed garden.
Back in the house, Neville faces down Mary as he threatens to send her away to boarding school, culminating in a violent confrontation between the doctor and the girl. Immediately after, Martha soothes Mary, telling her to stay strong. With Martha's help, Mary writes to Archibald in Paris, urging him to come home. Archibald's emotional turmoil continues to dominate him ; however, Lily's ghost reappears, Archibald is able to see her, and she expresses that she always loved him. They come to the conclusion that her death was no one's fault, and Archibald can finally let her go as she tells him to care for their child and go home to the garden. Returning, he enters the garden to find Colin completely healthy; in fact, he is beating Mary in a footrace as Archibald walks through the door. Archibald, a changed man, sends Neville away to his Paris flat and triumphantly embraces Mary and Colin back into his life. The spirits of Mary's parents, Albert and Rose, along with Lily, promise to look over the living for the rest of their days.

Changes from the original novel

Burnett's novel primarily focused on Mary and her interactions with Colin, Martha, and Dickon. The musical adds more emphasis to the adult characters by presenting the shared history entwining the two families. Originally, Burnett stated that the name of Archibald's wife was Lilias, and that she was the sister of Mary Lennox's father; in the musical, Colin's and Mary's mothers are sisters named Lily and Rose respectively.
In the book, Colin's private physician is an otherwise unnamed poor cousin of Archibald Craven; Colin privately remarks to Mary that Dr. Craven is the next heir to Misselthwaite and "always looks cheerful when is worse", but Burnett also states that Dr. Craven is "not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let run into actual danger." The musical tightens the doctor's conflict of interest and makes him the primary antagonist as Archibald's brother, Dr. Neville Craven, who once hopelessly loved Lily and whom Mary expressly accuses of wanting Colin to die for the sake of his inheritance.

Songs

Act I
Act II
A full recording was made with the original Broadway cast, including all of the songs listed above as well as some interstitial material, and released on CD by Columbia Records in 1991.
An eight-song "highlights" album with Fiddes, Ritchie, and the rest of the Australian cast was released on CD by Polydor Records Australia in 1995.
The original London production was partially reworked for production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, reducing the emphasis on the adult characters to return the plot closer to the original book. A full recording of this version was released on CD by First Night Records in 2001.

Awards and nominations

Original Broadway production