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A tale that has won hearts since it was written at the turn of the century is coming to Melbourne as a musical with its heart on its sleeve. Greg Burchall reports on the latest stirrings in the garden.
It's a classic tale, to be sure. Sweet, naive, evocative, atmospheric, part of many a childhood, but what, more than 80 years after its original publication, can The Secret Garden tell us in the nebulous '90s?
Young Mary wakes up. It's a lovely morning. Except her parents and every other inhabitant of the English compound in Bombay have closed their fists to cholera during the night.
She's packed off to Yorkshire, to the Gothic mansion of her uncle Archie. A peppy host he is not. He's still brooding over the death of his wife, some 10 years before.
Mary explores the grounds, finds a walled garden kept locked since her aunt's death. The contents are as dead as the GST.
But with love and toil and a little help from the ghosts of chrysanthemums past, the bloom times return.
Susan H. Schulman loves the story. It's one of her fondest memories of her Brooklyn childhood. Schulman directed the original Tony-award winning Broadway production and is in Melbourne to coach the Australian cast, which includes usual suspects Anthony Warlow and Marina Prior, with Philip Quast and June Salter.
"It's struck such a chord with today's audiences," said Schulman. "It's so uplifting and hopeful, amidst such gloom and cynicism. "So often you feel so helpless 'What's the point?' I know I feel it sometimes. So you don't do anything. But if you help one person or keep one garden going, what a difference you can make."
Schulman always knew she wanted to be in theatre. But not just any theatre. The stakes were always Broadway or bust.
It took 18 years after graduating from the prestigious Yale School of Drama. It was just as she was "dealing with the fact" that she would never work on the Great White Way.
Easier if you'd been artistic director elsewhere. Or a big- name-actor-turned-director. Or a major-league writer directing your own work. Or a man. Schulman wasn't sure she'd even get to direct a commercial off-Broadway production.
"Directing is still thought of as a man's job," she said. "The old saying: 'A woman has to be twice as good to get half as far' is true. I've heard it so many times, especially if I'm directing a musical: 'It's an awfully big production, do you think you can handle it?' I know I'm small, and that doesn't help, but if I were a man with the credentials I've got, there wouldn't be any comment at all."
Then came Carnival and her radical reworking of Sondheim's Company. Broadway called. It was Sweeney Todd. She worked a lot of feminism and class issues into the story of the barber- shop mass murderer (they weren't called serial killers back then) and his grateful pie-maker neighbor.
For Schulman, Sweeney Todd was a "personal drama". She loves Broadway. She loves The Big Shows. But she'd rather see content than spectacle.
"The Secret Garden talks about taking care of the environment, " she says. "It talks about taking care of children. These are concerns we have gotten away from. It's a story that says we're going to have to return to the family."
Schulman approached the production as an infant. She remembered what the story gave her when she first read it and wanted the production to be "the way a child sees things".
"It's not a literal production," she says. "There is a great emphasis on loss and on life. What you see on stage is the inner lives of these characters. Everyone carries ghosts, a lot of old baggage, and we can't go forward until we first see it and, second, drop it. If you don't, it stops you from growing. And that's the journey of Archibald Mary shows him what he has on earth is worth living for, not grieving about what is gone."
It's an all-stops-out production, as we've come to expect from producer John Frost, who calls The Secret Garden "a show with heart".
If nothing else, it's a show with history and a multi-generational built-in audience.
DAYS IN THE GARDEN.
1849 Frances Eliza Hodgson born in Manchester, England.
1886 She writes Little Lord Fauntleroy.
The book's hero has long golden curls like her son, Vivian, and a velvet suit with lace collar, like Oscar Wilde. 1909 Writes The Secret Garden.
1924 She dies in Plandome, New York.
1949 The Secret Garden: MGM film, starring Margaret O'Brien and a 13-year-old Dean Stockwell. Classic.
1974 The Secret Garden passes into public domain. Many children's theatre productions.
1987 TV movie, directed by Alan Grint and starring Derek Jacobi, Gennie James and Billie Whitelaw. Average.
1991 Broadway musical. Plays for two seasons, then tours the US, Japan and Canada.
1993 New film version directed by Agnieszka Holland. Well- crafted.
1995 Melbourne. First production of the Broadway musical outside the US with non-US cast. Opens Wednesday at the State Theatre.
© The Age Company Ltd.
