'Secret Garden' a Lovely Show to Behold
Chicago Tribune
Mary Lennox, the heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden," is a little girl who suffers a child's
most terrible nightmare, the loss of her home and parents.
Orphaned, miserable and brought back to England from India, she moves into a gloomy old mansion in Yorkshire,
where all of the inhabitants, from her widowed uncle to her sickly boy cousin, bear the pain of some deep physical
or psychological malaise.
But Mary, through love and pluck and the good offices of some robust peasant servants, is able to survive this house
of death, and along with the symbolic rebirth of a secret garden she nurses back to health, she is able to supplant
memories of a dreary past with renewed belief in a happy tomorrow.
That is the hopeful message of Burnett's 1911 novel, and it is the appealing substance of the 1991 Broadway musical
fashioned from the book that arrived here Tuesday night for a one-week engagement in the Auditorium Theatre.
The production has not been wholly successful in evoking the novel's enduring mood of mystery and wonder. Its
book, by Marsha Norman, dawdles a bit too much in its recurring flashback scenes; the sound of the miked voices
has been cranked up too high to preserve an aura of childlike charm; and its touring cast generally is stronger in
vocal than in acting abilities.
Its music, by Lucy Simon, is, at its most mundane, simply serviceable in advancing the story. At its best, however, it
reaches some powerful high points: a duet of impassioned lost love for the unhappy uncle (Kevin McGuire) and his
doctor brother (Douglas Sills); a stirring hymn to vitality in man and plant, for Mary (Melody Kay) and the servant boy
(Roger Bart) who befriends her; and an exquisite, haunting invitation to "Come to My Garden," sung by the ghost of
the uncle's beautiful wife (Anne Runolfsson, who has one of the most beautiful voices in the cast).
This is, above all, a lovely show to see, thanks in great part to the Tony Award-winning design of Heidi Landesman's
richly layered scenery, which frames the story in the decorations of a giant, gorgeous Edwardian valentine. Using
elements of a doll's house and a popup picture book, Landesman has created a sumptuous wonderland, bringing the
musical to a sunny conclusion with the sudden, spectacular splash of the secret garden in full bloom.
-Chicago Tribune
June 11, 1992
Biography | News | Photo Gallery
Fan Thoughts | Music | Lucy's Page
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page