York Theatre Royal's revival of the musical adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic children's book 'The Secret Garden' opens with the stage shrouded in dust sheets, setting a gloomy, interior tone. The production, directed by John Doyle, shifts focus from young Mary Lennox to the adults in the story, including her tortured uncle Archibald Craven and the ghost of his beloved wife Lily.
The actor-musician production adds to the sense of phantoms watching from the walls of Misselthwaite Manor, with players constantly present on the edges of scenes. Catherine Jayes' orchestrations of Lucy Simon's score provide an atmospheric accompaniment to this darker, more haunting telling of the story.
However, the magic of Mary's transformation under the influence of nature is lost. The set design by Doyle and David L Arsenault offers only rising and falling gauze sheets printed with an impression of the Yorkshire Moors, leaving everything else to the imagination. A nod to the story's literary origins is made with Mary in modern dress carrying a copy of the book, but this reference is not developed further.
The truncated storytelling allows for little more than fleeting vignettes between Mary and characters such as maid Martha, her brother Dickon, head gardener Ben, and Archibald's sickly son Colin. While there are tender, nicely performed moments, the action jumps from song to song with little sense of development, resulting in an overall effect like a dream: all mood, little drama.
