Picture: Marc Brenner
The Secret Garden: The Musical continues at York Theatre Royal until 4 April 2026.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
For a Yorkshire audience, director John Doyle’s staging version of The Secret Garden: The Musical could be said to appeal on every level.
Doyle’s penchant for stripped-down storytelling with a minimalist set and ensemble actor-musicians ensures the audience gets full value for their money. Nothing’s wasted, and the brilliant performers weave a seamless veil of songs and dialogue while bearing all the time instruments from flutes, guitars and cellos, to violins and a harp – and in the case of Steve Simmonds (Ben the gardener), the double bass.
Oh, and did I mention the solo and choral singing as well as occasional scene shifting? No beady Yorkshire eye could doubt that everyone puts in a right good shift. That they also manage to navigate the modest-sized stage without tripping over or bumping into instruments is a miracle of adroitness.
This compact version of the classic Edwardian fairy tale, with book and lyrics by Marsha Norman and music by Lucy Simon, has to pack in quite a yarn. Orphaned Mary Lennox (Estella Evans) has returned home from the Raj to the bleak, gothic Yorkshire manor house belonging to Uncle Archie, a cheerless figure haunted by the loss of his beloved wife.
He is an angrily reluctant guardian as well as being father to Colin (Dexter Pulling), confined to bed with mysterious ‘fevers’ which render him seemingly incapable of walking. It helps not a bit that Mary’s eyes closely resemble those of Archie’s deceased wife, as he painfully acknowledges in the touching ‘Lily’s Eyes’.
The loneliness of the Yorkshire estate at the edge of the moors is evoked through the simple effect of long gauze drapes shot through with a greenish light. Throughout characters appear variously beyond these veils, their shadowy forms feeding into the sense of ghosts watching on as Mary tugs at the secrets within the adult household.
Catrin Mai Edwards does a fine job as Martha the maid, the broad-vowelled lass who becomes the confiding guide to the family history. Her joint yearning for her own sense of freedom is sweetly captured in ‘If I had a Fine White Horse’.
Simons’ music carries the musical revival to a joyous conclusion, but the economy of scale comes with drawbacks. The drama of the story for one.
Mary in the revered novel is depicted at first as the spoilt child of a wealthy colonial family, slowly relinquishing her rude presumption as she warms to the characters and rural setting around her.
There are moments where fans of the story might have expected a climactic sense of revelation. For instance, we don’t witness a physical unlocking of the walled garden after Mary discovers the key nor anything visually suggesting a flower-bedecked lawn.
Audiences are often asked, justly, to let their imaginations fill out scenes. This feels as if perhaps a little more investment in design or visual effects could have boosted the magic at the heart of the story.
But the combined talents of an all-singing, playing, acting cast results in a magical, albeit abbreviated, version of the Secret Garden story.
Mike McKay
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