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For a couple of years it's been The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe up at Stratford as the seasonal treat and it did well, despite the bigger game on offer in The Lion King. Now the RSC has junked the animals and is fielding an all-human musical (give or take a robin). This time it's Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, still a firm family favourite after 90 years.
The story is about Mary Lennox, a spoilt brat who returns as an orphan from India to live in her uncle's mansion on the Yorkshire moors where the wind wuthers and the sets wobble. She chums up with a local boy, Dickon, and discovers that she has a bad-tempered, bedridden cousin, Colin. She also finds a secret garden.
With the help of Dickon she restores the place and, as she does so, little Colin starts to get better. By the end, you have all sorts of emotional awakenings, miraculous healings and banished fears. As is the way with family shows, you sob, you gasp, you yawn here and there and you eat a lot of Smarties, but the great strength of Adrian Noble's production is that the two children in it are quite brilliant. On the first night, Natalie Morgan (Mary) and Luke Newberry (Colin) played off each other superbly - and boy, do they know how to throw a tantrum. If this is method acting based on their experience of home life, I wouldn't want to be their parents.
The older generation is superb too. Philip Quast as the grieving uncle dominates both halves of the show and Peter Polycarpou bristles as the dour doctor. There's a memorably sour performance from Dilys Laye as the grumpy housekeeper, Mrs Medlock and - in complete contrast - Freddie Davis is bliss as the cuddly old gardener. When are we going to see him cast as Malvolio or Dogberry?
But is the musical itself any cop? Not really. Originally a Broadway show, there's a lot wrong with Marsha Norman's book, one of the key irritations being the constant and confusing reappearance of the uncle's deceased love, a beautiful spook. Lucy Simon's music is rather repetitious, the songs (with hints of Cat Stevens, Sweeney Todd and The Hired Man) detaining us too often in the second act which needs to shed about 30 minutes. Gillian Lynne's choreography works best when she has the legion of gardeners doing a hoe-down.
Still, it is a family show with plenty to sock you in the eye. Anthony Ward's sets with actors in Edwardian costume conjure up a world of starchy isolation. There are storms to frighten the kiddies, the arrival of spring to delight us and a tale of human healing to lift the heart. It's a great bet for a family outing and a triumph for the RSC - not least because it's a silk purse made from a pig's ear.
