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The heroine is dead before the first bar is played. The hero is a hunchback. Half the characters are ghosts and the rest are rustics and children. Andrew Lloyd Webber wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot baton.
Composer Lucy Simon and lycricist Marsha Norman might be braver than Sir Andrew when it comes to subject matter but they play it safe in every other way. That makes The Secret Garden an enjoyable and touching - but bloodless - few hours in the theatre.
Frances Hodgson Burnett's story of a young orphan's effect on her widowed uncle's household has been touring Australia (with garish chocolate-box designs and direction by the original Broadway team, Heidi Landesman and Susan H. Schulman) for the past six months.
But there are some teething problems here. From where I sat on opening night, the sound image was flat and indistinct, especially at the bass end.
But more of a problem are the wooden movements of the cast. It looks right in Uncle Archibald and his mutton-chopped brother, Neville, who are the very model of stilted Britishness, but the phantoms around them look as if they are suffering from advanced rigor mortis.
From start to finish, Marina Prior (Archie's zombie wife, Lily) has her arms rooked back behind her like a gunslinger about to draw.
Perhaps the stance is meant to remind us of angel wings but it certainly reduces the prospects of seeing her waltzing with her hunchback widower.
Throughout, Schulman's direction looks imposed on the performers.
Everyone knows where to stand, what to do and how to look but few convince that they know exactly why they are doing it.
Anthony Warlow, Philip Quast, Raymond Duparc and, on occasions, the two children are exceptions. In the tiny role of old gardener Ben Weatherstaff, Duparc shows up the rest of the cast by not faking it.
While we're on the subject of faking it, why are we seeing a blue-eyed boy play a fakir and a very Anglo-looking woman play Mary's Indian servant in a country that has no fewer than three professional Indian dance companies?
As you would expect from a cast headed by Warlow, Quast and Prior, the singing is excellent and the artists have been carefully matched to the widely differing vocal styles of the roles.
Dickon, for example, requires a soft, folk-rock style of voice: Tom Blair's voice is ideal.
Susan-ann Walker turns Martha's torch song, 'Hold On', into a show stopper.
But the real find is Sarah Ogden, who alternates in the role of the orphan Mary with Samantha Fiddes.
In addition to being a very passable actor, Ogden handles the huge range of her singing part with skill and ease.
She fairly belts out her end of Wick, a duet with Dickon.
Prior's singing in Act One has an unearthly beauty. Thanks to radio mikes, some effects and the singer opening her mouth less than usual, we hear Prior as if telepathically. But her last and biggest number, 'How Could I Ever Know', is less impressive.
Warlow gets some fierce competition from Quast, especially in the brilliantly-paced 'Lily's Eyes', in which Archibald and Neville passionately recall their love for Archibald's wife.
Their duet is the one truly electrifying moment in the musical.
But Archibald is the more complex and rewarding character, and Warlow - in spite of tending to overdo the fey mincing - makes the most of its dramatic and vocal potential.
His recent and very public encounter with mortality makes this an especially poignant performance.
© Herald and Weekly Times
