I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel The Secret Garden six decades after its publication, but the story—a “difficult” ten-year-old girl who deals with unbearable sadness by using paganesque incantations to unleash the healing power of the earth itself—resonated strongly. Theo’s solid staging of the novel’s musical adaptation (book and lyrics by Marsha Norman, score by Lucy Simon) reveals a tale that remains timeless.
The Secret Garden
Through 1/5/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 6 PM; no show Thu 11/28; Howard Street Theater, 721 Howard, Evanston, 773-939-4101, theo-u.com, $45-$60
Directed by Christopher Pazdernik with musical direction by Carolyn Brady, the plot begins with the cholera outbreak that orphans Mary Lennox (Joryhebel Ginorio), her household collapsing in a whirl of blood-red scarves in Nich O’Neil’s evocative choreography. Mary is sent to live with her emotionally distant uncle, Archibald (Will Koski), his villainous brother Neville (Jeffrey Charles), and Archibald’s sickly son, Colin (Kailey Azure Green). It falls to housekeeper Martha (Dakota Hughes) and her son Dickon (Lincoln J. Skoien) to restore a sense of joy in Mary, whose recovery forever changes the lives of her surviving relatives.
The production is mildly miscast: Ginorio’s Mary sounds great and captures the character’s filter-free bluntness, but she reads far closer to 20 than ten on stage. Koski’s Archibald has an extraordinarily powerful voice, but he’s serving boyish charm when Heathcliff levels of brooding are required.
That doesn’t matter when the cast is in song. Soaring case in point: “Hold On,” anchored by Hughes’s galvanic insistence:
“When you see a man who’s ragin’ / And he’s jealous and he fears / That you’ve walked through walls / He’s hid behind for years / What you do then is you tell yourself / To wait it out and say / ‘It’s this day, not me / That’s bound to go away.’”
Easier sung than done, but those are words to live by regardless, and they are powerfully delivered in Theo’s joyful production.
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