The Secret Garden (musical)

The Secret Garden was The Third Annual World AIDS Day Benefit Concert, held on December 5, 2005, at the Manhattan Center Studios Grand Ballroom, New York City, directed by Stafford Arima and produced by Jamie McGonnigal.[22] The cast featured Laura Benanti as Lily, Steven Pasquale as Archie, Will Chase as Neville, Celia Keenan-Bolger as Martha, David Canary as Ben, Jaclyn Neidenthal as Mary, Struan Erlenborn as Colin, Max von Essen as Albert, Sara Gettelfinger as Rose, and Michael Arden as Dickon. The cast also included Matt Cavenaugh, Jenny Powers, Ben Magnuson, Shonn Wiley, Reshma Shetty, Deborah S. Craig, Nehal Joshi, and Kate Shindle, with Barbara Rosenblat returning to the role she created, Mrs. Medlock.

Manhattan Concert Productions presented a concert production of The Secret Garden at Lincoln Center for two nights on February 21 and 22, 2016, with Sydney Lucas starring as Mary Lennox.[23] She was joined by the original "Mary Lennox", Daisy Eagan, who now plays the role of Martha, and Barbara Rosenblat, returning to her original role of Mrs. Medlock. Also in the cast were Ramin Karimloo as Archibald Craven, Sierra Boggess as Lily, Cheyenne Jackson as Neville Craven, Ben Platt as Dickon, Jere Shea as Ben,[24] Oscar Williams as Colin Craven, Nikki Renée Daniels as Rose, Josh Young as Captain Albert Lennox and Telly Leung as Fakir.[25][26]

Rebecca Luker (the original Lily) appeared in a benefit concert for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Metro New York and Western New York at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on January 11, 2016.[27] The concert was originally scheduled to be one night only, but a second performance was added for January 17, 2016. Daisy Eagan, the original "Mary Lennox" was the host for the concerts.[28]

The Secret Garden (in concert) was presented in Toronto, Canada, in January 2017 as the inaugural show of a newly formed theatre company Podium Concert Productions, headed by Producer Peter da Costa and Conductor Mark Camilleri.[29][30]

In February 2019, The Secret Garden was presented by the Virginia Stage Company in the Norfolk Botanical Gardens in a concert to celebrate the Company's 40th anniversary. This was the first time that The Secret Garden has been staged there since the World Premiere in 1989.[31]

Mary Lennox, a 10-year-old English girl who has lived in India since birth, dreams of English nursery rhymes and Hindi chants ("Opening").[n 2] She awakes to learn that her parents and nearly everyone she knew in India, including her Ayah, have died of cholera. She is discovered by survivors of the epidemic ("There's a Girl").

Mary is sent to live in England with her mysterious uncle Archibald Craven, a reclusive hunchback who has spent years grieving the death of his wife, Lily.[32] Due to Archibald's introversion, the management of his manor house, Misselthwaite, is largely left to his manipulating brother, Dr. Neville Craven.[32] The housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, coldly welcomes Mary to Yorkshire on her arrival ("The House Upon the Hill"). Due to Archibald and Mary's lingering grief, the house is haunted by ghosts from their pasts (identified in the libretto as "dreamers" who sometimes act as a Greek chorus of narrators). Lonely and misbehaving, Mary despises her new surroundings and has difficulty sleeping her first night there, hearing echoes of crying voices ("I Heard Someone Crying"). The next morning, Mary meets Martha, a young chambermaid who encourages Mary to go play outside by telling her about the surrounding moorland and grounds ("If I Had a Fine White Horse"), in particular, a hidden garden. Archibald does not meet Mary, but remains submerged in his ghostly memories of Lily ("A Girl In the Valley").

Mary explores the walled garden, laid out in Victorian style as a topiary maze, where she encounters the old gardener Ben Weatherstaff and Martha's brother Dickon ("It's a Maze"). Ben tells Mary that the secret garden has been locked since Lily's death, as it reminds Archibald of her. The mystical Dickon invokes the spring ("Winter's On the Wing") in a rustic druid-like fashion; he claims to converse with animals and teaches Mary to speak the Yorkshire dialect to a robin, which guides Mary to the garden's secret key ("Show Me the Key").

Archibald and Mary finally meet, and Mary asks him for nothing but a bit of earth to plant a garden of her own; he is startled by the simple modesty of the request and compares her to Lily for their shared horticultural interests ("A Bit of Earth"). As the Yorkshire gloom turns to a fearsome storm ("Storm I"), Archibald and his brother Neville both notice that Mary shares physical resemblances to her aunt Lily, with whom both men were in love ("Lily's Eyes"). Mary again hears crying ("Storm II"), but this time she uncovers its source: Colin, a secret cousin of hers confined to bed since his birth, when his mother Lily died. Colin has been in bed his entire life because Archibald, his father, feared that Colin would also become a hunchback, likely influenced by Neville's deceptive medical advice. Colin confides in Mary his nightly dreams of a man who comes to him and reads from a magical book ("A Round-Shouldered Man"). However, just as Mary and Colin embrace their new yearned-for companionship, Neville and Mrs. Medlock burst in and angrily tell her she is never to see Colin again because of his fragile medical condition. As the storm reaches its peak, Mary runs outside and, discovering the hidden door to the garden, she inserts the key ("Final Storm").

Mary has a reverie about the exciting new privacy afforded to her by the garden ("The Girl I Mean to Be"). Much like both Mary's uncle and Mary herself, the garden is neglected and half-wild. Neville's musings are darker: recalling his unrequited love for Lily, Neville wants Archibald to leave Misselthwaite entirely to him. The two brothers' thoughts are interwoven with ghostly echoes of old arguments between Lily and her sister Rose (Mary's mother) about Archibald's suitability as a prospective husband and father ("Quartet"). At Neville's urging, the melancholy Archibald leaves for Paris, pausing only to warmly read a fairy tale to Colin as the boy sleeps ("Race You To the Top of the Morning"). Thus, the "round-shouldered man" is not a dream at all but merely Colin's own father, who, despite his emotional devastation, still deeply loves his son.

Mary asks Dickon for help with the garden, which seems dead; Dickon explains that it is probably just dormant and that, with some assistance, it will grow ("Wick"). Mary tells Colin about the discovered garden, but he is initially reluctant to go outside until encouraged by an inviting vision of his mother ("Come to My Garden/Lift Me Up"). Mary, Dickon, and Martha clandestinely bring Colin to the garden in a wheelchair. In the garden, the exercise, fresh air, and magical incantations in both Hindi and English led by Mary, the ghosts, and the manor staff strengthen Colin, allowing him to rise from his wheelchair for the first time ("Come Spirit, Come Charm"), as the onlookers sing the praises of the renewed garden ("A Bit of Earth (Reprise)").

Back in the house, Neville faces down Mary as he threatens to send her away to boarding school, culminating in a violent confrontation between the doctor and the girl. Immediately after, Martha soothes Mary, telling her to stay strong ("Hold On"). With Martha's help, Mary writes to Archibald in Paris ("Letter Song"), urging him to come home. Archibald's emotional turmoil continues to dominate him ("Where In the World"); however, Lily's ghost reappears, Archibald is able to see her, and she expresses that she always loved him. They come to the conclusion that her death was no one's fault, and Archibald can finally let her go as she tells him to care for their child and go home to the garden ("How Could I Ever Know"). Returning, he enters the garden to find Colin completely healthy; in fact, he is beating Mary in a footrace as Archibald walks through the door. Archibald, a changed man, sends Neville away to his Paris flat and triumphantly embraces Mary and Colin back into his life. The spirits of Mary's parents, Albert and Rose, along with Lily, promise to look over the living for the rest of their days ("Finale").

Burnett's novel primarily focused on Mary and her interactions with Colin, Martha, and Dickon. The musical adds more emphasis to the adult characters by presenting (and to some extent, inventing) the shared history entwining the two families. Originally, Burnett stated that the name of Archibald's wife was Lilias, and that she was the sister of Mary Lennox's father; in the musical, Colin's and Mary's mothers are sisters named Lily and Rose respectively.

In the book, Colin's private physician is an otherwise unnamed poor cousin of Archibald Craven; Colin privately remarks to Mary that Dr. Craven is the next heir to Misselthwaite and "always looks cheerful when [Colin's health] is worse", but Burnett also states that Dr. Craven is "not an unscrupulous man, though he was a weak one, and he did not intend to let [Colin] run into actual danger." The musical tightens the doctor's conflict of interest and makes him the primary antagonist as Archibald's brother, Dr. Neville Craven, who once hopelessly loved Lily and whom Mary expressly accuses of wanting Colin to die for the sake of his inheritance.