Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon’s musical, “The Secret Garden,” is based on the novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Imagine “Jane Eyre” meets “Little Orphan Annie” with a strong horticultural bent and without the ubiquitous “Tomorrow,” and you’ve got it, now playing at the Red Branch Theatre Company in Columbia.
Her parents wiped out by cholera in 1906 India, 10-year-old Mary (Jenna Balderson) finds herself in a depressing Thornfield Mansion-like estate on the Yorkshire moors (are there any dreary English estates that aren’t on the moors?) owned by her even more depressed Uncle Archibald (Nick Mullinix) who, like Rochester, never seems to be around.
A hunchback (though no pillow tucked under the actor’s shoulder pads was evident), Archibald is obsessed with the loss of his wife, Lily (Tiffany Wise), who, unlike Rochester’s Bertha, really is dead — she makes numerous cameos as a ghost, as do Mary’s parents.
However, there is a family member sequestered somewhere in the house. But instead of a mad wife, it’s Archibald’s son, the bedridden Colin (Jonathan Hutchinson), whom Archibald’s doctor brother, Neville (Eddie Chell), fears might have a future ringing bells at Notre Dame if he doesn’t die first.
The cast rounds out with two loyal gardeners, Ben (Harry Ransom) and Dickon (Will Emory), who don’t have much to do because Archibald locked up and literally threw away the key to his wife’s garden, a key Mary is soon questing after.
With the help of Martha (Karice Parada), the plucky chambermaid (imagine Mary Poppins meets the singing teapot from “Beauty and the Beast”), Mary is soon opening more than the ivy-covered door to a garden gone to seed. Will Archibald let go of his grief and open his heart to his niece? Will Colin realize he’s not Charles Laughton-in-training and start running foot races with Mary? Will Lily’s roses bloom in her garden again?
See the play to find out. You’ll find Red Branch does a fine job in making four columns and a single arch serve as a home in India, an English manor and as a dying, then thriving garden.
A small ensemble provides music, which would have been more effective if not so loud, as often the music overpowered rather than complemented the singers.
There is much to cover in this two-act, 18-scene production with 28 songs to perform, resulting in a swift, though too often staccato, pace needed to bring the show in under two hours.
IF YOU GO
“The Secret Garden” is playing at the Red Branch Theatre Company, now in residence at the Drama Learning Center at 9130 Red Branch Rd. in Columbia, through Oct. 12, Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets range from $14 to $18. Call 410-997-9352, or visit www.redbranchtheatre.com.
