Childhood Storybook Memories...

I headed out with a group of friends last night to see The Secret Garden musical on its closing night at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh. Technically speaking, an imaginative & artistic set, well lit & well costumed (thanks to Wimbledon graduate, Francis O'Connor). The performances from the cast in terms of both singing & acting were also top-notch.

It surprised me how much I could recall from my reading of it as a girl as I gave a brief synopsis to my friends beforehand. I cannot remember for the life of me as to who published the book we owned. If I could, I would track it down again & buy it back in a snap as that one of ours was swept away by the tidying ravages of time. The book was beautifully illustrated & I can see the very captions acompanying the images, starting out with "Mary Lennox was a sickly sallow and sour-faced girl."

I think part of my reason for remembering the plot so vividly was my fascination was the precocious "yellow girl" left orphaned in a foreign land & shipped across the world to live on the moors of Yorkshire. That experience of vast stretches of purple grasses was well within my ken as I spent part of my childhood roaming about on the North York Moors. Add to that, the Gothic element (which this production captured so neatly) of waste & disrepair in both building & inhabitants; winding forbidden passages leading to two sour-faced precocious children coming face-to-face with each other; the intrigue of a hidden door into a different world. Ach, no wonder it took hold so well.

One aspect which Marsha Norman's musical adaptation does not entirely realise is the pivotal role of Ben Weatherstaff, the surly gardener who discovers the children amongst the partially neglected garden and the changes within his character. Initially Ben is angry at finding them there, having quietly continued to nurture the roses but he ends up conspiring in their secret, paving a way back to health & vigour. I remember the moment he introduces them to the Doxology, sung at first by Dickon:

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

Praise Him, all creatures here below;

Praise Him above, ye Heavenly Host;

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

I think I can recount the moment of the song because of how it initally appears incongruous with the outdoor experience & its curious huddle of people; the garden presenting no established setting of a Sunday. Yet that moment is actually a key one in my mind in terms of creation & new life: the very themes which the novel so readily explores & engages with to bring those broken aspects back to new life through the resolution of the ending.

life has its ‘wuthering’, the painful struggle to get through, but being alive – being ‘wick’ – means that along with the pain you can experience joy, growth and connection.

- Edinburgh Spotlight

Having remembered so vividly, I am now compelled to go back & re-read. Thankfully TSG had already foreseen & embraced that desire of their audience within their marketing strategy of re-printed Penguin classic alongside the programme :)