1996 - 1997

The Secret Garden

India, Yorkshire, 1906

Ten-year-old Mary Lennox awakens one morning in India to discover that her parents and all the surrounding compound of English residents have been killed by a cholera epidemic. She is soon swept away to Misselthwaite Manor, her uncle Archibald Craven's gloomy mansion in Yorkshire, England, to be raised by strangers.

In Yorkshire, Mary finds her uncle so distracted and depressed by his wife Lily's death ten years earlier, that he can barely remember that Mary is now living under his roof. Spoiled, unruly and left to wander the gardens and care for herself, Mary befriends a servant girl, Martha, her brother Dickon, and the estate's head gardener, Ben Wetherstaff. But none of them will tell her the truth about the mysterious locked garden behind the estate, nor will they shed any light on Mary's persistent claim that every night she hears someone in the house crying pitiably behind some unopened door.

As Mary takes the situation into her own hands, her personality is transformed. She first discovers the long lost key to the sadly neglected secret garden, and then her equally neglected cousin, Colin, who has been bedridden since birth.

With the help of Dickon, Martha and Ben, Mary untangles the secret of Colin's birth and his mother Lily's death. Together they nurse both the long shutaway garden and Colin back to full bloom again.

Director: Ginny Day

Musical Director: John McGovern

Choreographer, Assistant Director: Val Keenleyside

Cast

Production