Shakespeare Theatre’s “The Secret Garden” (review): A Broken Secret
Shakespeare Theatre offers an uneven revival of The Secret Garden, which is still unequivocally Daisy Eagan's show
From the beginning, Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon were convinced their musical, The Secret Garden, would live or die based on one factor: the caliber of the actress cast as young Mary. This, despite an original Broadway cast that included the estimable Mandy Patinkin, the luminously voiced Rebecca Luker, and a sensational newcomer by the name of John Cameron Mitchell.
Twenty-five years later, The Secret Garden (
) remains Daisy Eagan’s show. The youngest-ever female Tony Award-winner for her work as Mary, Eagan has returned in a revival — or an “active reworking,” as the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Michael Kahn puts it — at Sidney Harman Hall, in a co-production with Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre directed by David Armstrong. Eagan assumes the role of young chambermaid Martha, a motherly supporting character and the first to show any kindness to the quite-contrary Mary (Anya Rothman), described early on as “the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.”
Eagan’s Martha is also the first to strike a chord in an otherwise uneven production, whose first few numbers are a hurried, confusing jumble of overlapping characters, quick-change scenes and minimal exposition to explain what’s going on. We’re quickly whisked along with Mary to Yorkshire, after her parents die of a cholera outbreak in colonial India. Back in her native England, she is raised by an uncle she’s never met, Archibald Craven (Michael Xavier), a grief-stricken widower who lives with his brother Neville Craven (Josh Young) in a manor house full of spirits.
The first such ghostly encountered is Craven’s late wife Lily, portrayed by the fine-voiced Lizzie Kempler. Mary proceeds to duet with Lily, but Rothman strains and struggles to vocally keep up with her posthumous elder. Rothman grows into the role as the show goes on, and presumably will gain strength with subsequent performances. And she mostly hits the right notes in a portrayal of a prickly, lonely girl who discovers her heart and humanity once she sets out to find Lily’s walled sanctuary, meeting kindred spirits along the way.
The Secret Garden is held in special, almost cult-like regard by those who grew up with Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s book, as well as those who fell under the musical’s spell in 1991. If you’re not in either camp, you might wonder what all the adoration is about. Marsha Norman won a Tony Award for a book about a precocious girl that remarkably doesn’t pander to either children or adults. And yet, it also doesn’t provoke or veer from predictability enough to register more than passing interest. Simon’s rather plain, tender, tempered score is also not particularly noteworthy, save for some subtle Indian flourishes to give it a bit of exotic oomph.
Indian mystique fuels an entrancing bit of choreography from Armstrong, when the Indian spirit Fakir (Vishal Vaidya) leads a group dance in “Come Spirit, Come Charm.” Other than that, though, serious choreographed movement is mostly limited to the ghosts weaving in and out of a maze of giant sculpted garden hedges — which are additionally spun around in synchronized turns. It’s not as hokey as it sounds.
The Secret Garden is a far cry from the first musical the Shakespeare mounted, Candide, which gloriously trumpeted what has become an annual affair in the Harman. If you had the good fortune of catching Mary Zimmerman’s stupendous, definitive production of that Bernstein musical/operetta six years ago, you’ll no doubt feel wistful about it upon seeing Secret Garden. Armstrong and scenic designer Anna Louizos are as modest and streamlined in their approach as Zimmerman was breathtakingly baroque, with elaborate, architectural sets that made full, dramatic use of the Harman’s deep and flexible stage. In fact, some of Louizos’ set pieces appear not just streamlined but subpar — at a recent performance, a chest of drawers wobbled precariously when shut, and actors repeatedly struggled to enter the titular preserve through a narrow, shifty passageway cut out of a hedge on wheels. There is, however, a saving grace. (Two, if you count designer Ann Hould-Ward’s elegant, vibrant Victorian-era costuming.) As you no doubt expect, The Secret Garden ends with a garden. But not just hedges on wheels and other easily portable basic bushes and things of that ilk. Rather, it ends in a blooming bang.
The Secret Garden runs to Dec. 31 at Sidney Harman Hall, Harman Center for the Arts, 610 F St. NW. Tickets are $44 to $123. Call 202-547-1122 or visit shakespearetheatre.org.
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