Okay, so I know this is a week late, but it took me a while to come up with something to say other than OMG THIS IS SOOOO GOOD GO LISTEN TO IT RIGHT NOW!
This right here is your warning that I'm going to gush unrepentantly over this musical. The Secret Garden was one of my absolute favorite childhood books (despite adult me recognizing its problematic elements), and this musical is everything I could ever have wanted out of an adaptation. I don't want anyone to be disappointed in it because I oversold it, so just take my ramblings with a grain of salt and know that your mileage may vary.
Overview: A musical adaptation of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, it keeps mostly to the plot of the book, but also takes the opportunity to expand on stories only hinted at. Mostly, it’s the story of Mary Lennox, an orphaned misanthrope who takes up gardening in lieu of therapy.
Highlights: I have a lot of favorites in this musical. I could almost just put the entire song list up. But since I have to pick and choose...
The House Upon the Hill - the first time I heard this song, I knew I was going to like this musical. It's a wonderful introduction to the haunted loneliness of Misselthwaite, and to have it sung by a chorus of ghosts was the icing on the cake. I like haunted house stories where the house is a character in its own right, and I was excited that Misselthwaite got such a spectacular introduction.
I Heard Someone Crying - so I was pretty convinced that there was no way to top The House Upon the Hill in the first act. I was wrong. The very next song is a beautiful exposition of our main characters. Establishing the parallels in their loss and loneliness, as well as their need for therapy. This is our first real look at Lily’s character, and it is amazing.
It's a Maze - so technically this is Ben’s character song, but it also serves as a theme every time Mary enters the grounds, either searching or fleeing. It’s played for comedy with Ben, but there’s an undercurrent of menace that you can hear whenever it comes up again. It’s a song that definitely plays into the haunted house motif, but also into the themes of self discovery and forging one’s own path. Also, it’s just fun to sing to.
Winter's on the Wing - this is Dickon’s character song, and if I weren't driving while I listened to it, I would want to dance (which would be unfortunate, because I have no rhythm). It's a rousing, galloping song that fits Dickon’s untamed ways. Also, I like Celtic music.
Lily's Eyes - aka the love triangle song. No really, I was so confused the first time I listened to this song. There I was, thinking it was another Archibald love song to Lily, singing along absently while driving on the freeway, and then I get to the part where Neville is singing about his unrequited love for his brother’s wife, and I’m like, “Wait, what? Did I hear that right? What?” Now, I do enjoy a good romantic subplot--even one that relies on the love triangle trope--and listening to these two men singing about a woman (instead of the more typical, two women mooning over a man) was refreshing.
Plot Specifics: The musical assumes you've read the book enough to be reasonably familiar with the major plot points, if not all of the details--a reasonable expectation since it is a classic and there have been several adaptations. A stage production would probably fill in the gaps, but since I'm only listening to it in the car, I'm relying on book knowledge. I should admit right now that The Secret Garden was a childhood favorite of mine, and I’ve read it several times. That being said, adult me is not blind to the faults of the original--unexamined colonialism and classism among them. I’ll make note of any major changes here, but I’ll save any significant analysis for later.
The story opens in British occupied India (between 1900 and 1910) during an outbreak of cholera. British officers unexpectedly find a survivor of the disease, Mary Lennox. Everyone else--including her mother, father, and ayah--is dead (There’s a Girl). We move to Misselthwaite, England, where Archibald Craven--a widowed hunchback, still grieving for his wife, Lily--learns that he is now Mary’s guardian from his brother Neville Craven as per an old will. Neville suggests that Mary be sent away to a boarding school, but Archibald unexpectedly insists that she be housed at Misselthwaite.
This introduction establishes our main characters:
Mary Lennox - our main character. In the book, it’s clear that she was unwanted and neglected by her parents, and left entirely to the care of her ayah (an Indian domestic servant). Her first experience with human affection only occurs after her arrival at Misselthwaite Manor.
Archibald Craven - the main character of our secondary plot. Though he’s barely a character in the book, the musical gives him his own character arc. Mary’s uncle by way of her mother, he is a widower and a hunchback (the people of that time period had some regressive ideas about physical disabilities), who is still grieving for his wife by trying to disassociate himself from everything connected to her memory.
Lily Craven - Mary's aunt, Archibald’s wife, Colin’s mother. Now deceased, she was many things to many people. The musical gives her a role and a voice, though whether she's actually a ghost or it's the memories of her that haunt the characters is unclear.
Neville Craven - Archibald’s brother and expects to inherit his lands and fortune. He's also the family doctor. Despite this clear conflict of interest, Neville is definitely an antagonist rather than a villain--though he has some extremely questionable medical practices.
Yes, I know, I’m missing two major characters. But Dickon and Colin, in this story, exist to support Mary’s development, and they get much less play than in the book.
Right from the get go, the musical makes significant departures from the book. It glosses over the first few chapters--whose entire purpose seemed to be establishing Mary as sullen and misanthropic--in favor of getting straight to the main part of the story. It also simplifies the relationships between the characters. Mary's mother, Rose, is Lily’s sister, instead of Mary’s father being a distant cousin. Neville is Archibald’s brother instead of being a more distant relation. Given the time constraints on a musical (as opposed to a serialized novel) this makes sense as it helps tighten the narrative and cut down on excessive exposition.
This introduction gives us a better sense of the surrounding characters who barely made an appearance in the book. Archibald gets to be a lonely man, struggling to manage his grief. Neville gets to be a complete character. Lily, unlike in the book, gets the opportunity to speak for herself, instead of being a beautiful memory placed on an untouchable pedestal. These three (Archibald, Neville, and Lily) make up a (failed) trio, and the resulting contrasted parallels with our central trio (Mary, Dickon, and Colin) help frame the plot of the musical.
So the next song picks up with Mary and Mrs. Medlock travelling by carriage to Misselthwaite. I loved the haunted house vibe Misselthwaite had in the book, and I was always disappointed that it was introduced in such a spectacular fashion, but the haunted house never actually had any teeth. I wasn’t sure how the musical would handle it, but The House Upon the Hill does a great job making Misselthwaite seem dark and foreboding--bonus points for being sung by a ghostly chorus. We also get a brief insight into Mary, who at this point in her life has been subjected to the whole Victorian “seen and not heard” child rearing mentality and has been given a harsh lesson in how little her wants and needs matter in the grand scheme of things. After losing her entire family to cholera, being removed from the only home she’d ever known, and being shipped off to a stranger’s house in a strange land, it’s no wonder that Mary is angry about having so little control over her life. From there we go straight from there into I Heard Someone Crying, which immediately establishes the parallels between Mary and Archibald in terms of isolation and loneliness. It’s also the first time we get to hear Lily as someone other than just a ghostly narrator--a character in her own right, trying to look after her fractured family from beyond the grave.
The next morning Martha, one of the housemaids, suggests that Mary go outside to play with If I Had a Fine White Horse, which is a song about pretending and role play and just plain fun. There aren’t very many musicals with songs about children just having fun, so kudos to the writers for taking a break from the drama and melancholy that musicals are known for just to have fun. As in the book, Martha is both guide and goad, helping Mary navigate the unfamiliar landscape of treating people like people and pushing her outside her comfort zone (and literally outside). Oh hey, two female characters having a conversation about something other than a man. Bechdel-Wallace test, pass! I know, that's like the lowest of the low bars, but you'd be surprised at how few times it gets met.
Meanwhile, Archibald and Lily give us a flashback song with A Girl in the Valley about their courtship. This is a huge departure from the book, but a welcome one. We knew exactly nothing about Lily and Archibald’s relationship in the book. Was it a love match? An arranged marriage? We know Archibald loved her and she loved her garden, but not much more than that. This song finally gives Lily a voice (I know, I keep harping on this, but it’s pretty rare for a deceased female character to be able to give her version of things from beyond the grave) to say for herself that she was in love with her husband.
Archibald awakens from this flashback/dream to Mary--establishing an association between Lily and Mary--questioning him about ghosts and loss and family. It’s a good thing that they establish their relationship here as parent and child, otherwise the Lily/Mary parallels that crop up later (in A Bit of Earth, Lily’s Eyes, and Quartet) would make me very uncomfortable.
Coming back to Mary, it’s apparently been a few weeks since she first went outside, since she seems familiar with Ben Weatherstaff and he notes that she’s “back again.” Time skips seem to be a bit of the norm in this musical, but that's okay since they happened frequently in the book and it would probably get tedious replicating every conversation. Ben sings It's a Maze which is both a literal description of the grounds and a metaphor for Mary learning to navigate her relationships with other people. Naturally, we get our first glimpse of Dickon in this song along with our first glimpse of a cheerful Mary singing jump rope songs.
So Dickon, the nature boy. I remember liking Dickon as a child (and I still like him), but he's the one character without a story arc. He serves as sort of a translator (literally and figuratively) for Mary as she learns to interact with nature (and with other people). It's difficult to describe Dickon because of his close association with undomesticated nature (both flora and fauna). Wild and untamed have negative connotations that definitely don't fit for him, but neither is he entirely domestic. He's sort of an anthropomorphisation of the pastoral ideal, a perfect balance of human management and natural growth. This makes him a safe character for children to like--he has no flaws, so he can’t make any poor decisions that will turn out badly for him. His song Winter's on the Wing is both a rollicking fun character song and symbolic of Mary’s emotional thaw. This trend continues with Show Me the Key where Dickon facilitates Mary’s communication with the robin, but (and this is important) he fades out and allows her to develop her own relationship with the bird. It would have been very easy for Dickon, as the nature expert, to take over the narrative at this point, but not only does he let Mary do her own talking to the robin, he also leaves her (despite her disappointment) to find the key on her own. I remember, as a child, wanting to see more of Dickon in the book, but as an adult, I can better appreciate giving more time to the character who has actual character development.
Mary proceeds to ask her Uncle Archibald for “a bit of earth" following the time honored tradition of asking for something forbidden by disguising it as something else. Like a child who asks for “a snack" but really means “a carton of ice cream.” Naturally, Mary gets away with it. This is something of a brief encounter in the book, a scene to remind us that Archibald is a person who exists--which makes sense since the story is told almost exclusively through Mary's perspective. But the musical works at giving us songs from other points of view, and we get A Bit of Earth.
From Archibald’s perspective, this is where he starts seeing shades of Lily in Mary, starting with her interest in gardens. From a parental perspective, I can see him nudging her towards “something money can buy" since he feels incapable of giving affection (though his reference to “girlish charms" was uncomfortably similar to Dean “Jarback” Priest in L. M. Montgomery’s Emily books). But we can also see that he's actively worried about her caring about something that uncaring winter will inevitably kill, much like he cares (present tense) for Lily. Like Severus Snape, Archibald’s answer is “always".
Next we have a transition song in Storm 1 which serves the plot point in the book of Mary being awoken by a wailing cry, but it also sets us up for the metaphorical emotional storm that is coming.
Naturally, the follow up to Archibald’s A Bit of Earth is another song about Lily (Lily’s Eyes). I was all prepared to hear Archibald reminiscing over Lily, further cementing the connection between Mary and his dead wife. I was not prepared for this to be a duet, or for Neville to admit his unrequited love. On one hand, okay, Mary reminds people of Lily. Cool. Particularly Archibald who sees shades of Lily in Mary’s interest in gardening. On the other hand, it’s a little creepy for Neville to make that connection, since he's seen Mary a grand total of once. So, unlike Archibald, he's associating a young girl with a grown woman based solely on appearance. Neville’s streak of possessiveness for Lily, in the way he’s the first to call her “my Lily" is a bit distasteful, and there's something unsavory in the way he was waiting for her to notice him--almost as if he thought, “of course she would choose me over my brother if she knew how I felt.” There's a whole discussion about the so called “friendzone” there, but I'll save that for later.
Next we get Storm 2, which is a reprise of Storm 1. This one plays more to the emotional storm, and includes a reprise of I Heard Someone Crying, as Mary explores the house, determined now to find the source of the haunting cries. Book readers know that this is where we meet Colin, Archibald’s sickly son, who is convinced that he is dying, and, that even if he survives, he will be physically disabled. The book and the musical use the anachronistic and ableist word “cripple” but I can't quite bring myself to do that even if it is in both versions of the source material. Colin is a whiny brat, who uses pity for his condition in conjunction with his position as the child of the master of the house to get what he wants. To be fair, he does actually think that he is dying (spoiler, he's not), so his appeals aren't exactly unjustified, but he's still pretty unlikable at this stage. This is also where you should start to question Neville’s medical practices.
So despite his terrible attitude, Colin’s song is actually a sweet lullaby. Round Shouldered Man is his character song and it is a pretty big departure from the book. In both, Colin says that his father never visits him. But in the musical, he dreams of a round shouldered man who carries him to a garden and reads to him from a book. File that one away for later, because we'll be revisiting it in Act 2.
At this point Mary realizes that she and Colin are cousins, giving them both a human connection between equals.
Of course, this is where we get Final Storm, which is purely emotional. Now that Mary has discovered Colin, she's opened up a whole can of worms, throwing the whole household into a tizzy. In the book, things calm down and they agree to let Mary and Colin continue to have contact. Both because Colin demands it and because Mary is the one person immune to his tantrums. The musical, however, goes straight from the household argument to a manic reprise of It's a Maze interlaced with a chanting rendition of Mistress Mary Quite Contrary creating the image (in my mind, as I'm driving) of Mary fleeing the house into the maze where she finds the door to the garden.
Whew. We made it to the end of Act 1.
Next Week: Secret Garden (Act 2) or Making Good Things Even Better
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