The Secret Garden
August 28 - September 13, 2009

From The Director, Barbara Nichols...

What makes The Secret Garden a classic? It is a timeless story that every generation can discover anew, reflecting universal themes of life, death, love and forgiveness.

Although Mary Lennox and her family have suffered tragedy, the girl relies on strength and perseverance to help bring her new family together. Young yet resilient, Mary reminds us that tangled beneath life’s weeds and thorns are flowers waiting to be discovered.

The Real Mary Lennox

Frances Hodgson Burnett, (November 24, 1849 - October 29, 1924) was an English–American playwright and author, best known for her many children's stories: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Born Frances Eliza Hodgson in Manchester, U.K., her father died when she was 5. He left her mother with five children and little money. The family had to endure poverty and squalor in the Victorian slums. Through this, Frances seemed to have been happy and had a fertile imagination. She wrote her first poem at the age of 7 and soon began writing melodramatic novelettes. At age 16, the family immigrated to Knoxville, Tennessee in the United States in 1865. The move made no difference to the family's poverty, though now they were living in a much better environment. Following the death of her mother in 1867, an 18-year-old Frances was now the head of a family of four younger siblings.

Her first story was published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1868. Soon after she was being published regularly in Scribner's Monthly, Peterson's Ladies' Magazine and Harper's Bazaar. Her main writing talent was combining realistic detail of working-class life with a romantic plot. She began to write five or six stories each month, for $10 apiece and from then on supported her family.

She married Dr. Swan Burnett of Washington, D.C. in 1873. Her first novel was published in 1877; That Lass o' Lowrie's was a story of Lancashire life. After moving with her husband to Washington, D.C., Burnett published Little Lord Fauntleroy in 1885. It was originally intended as a children's book, but had a great appeal to mothers. The book sold more than half a million copies. It earned her more than $100,000 with a hugely successful play following it. Frances soon learned of a unlicensed staging of Little Lord Fauntleroy that was to open soon in London. She hurried across the Atlantic, writing her very own Fauntleroy play on her journey.

Her version opened 3 months after the imposters. Frances received glowing reviews and among the crowds who came to see the play were Prince Edward and his wife. Frances sued the unlicensed author, and the judge ruled in her favor setting a standard for all similar cases that followed. Authors could now stop playwrights from adapting their books without permission, establishing a precedent that was incorporated into British copyright law in 1911.

Scandalously, in 1898 she divorced Dr. Burnett. She later remarried, this time to Stephen Townsend, her business manager. This marriage would last less than two years, ending in 1902. Her later works include: A Little Princess (1905); The Secret Garden (1909), the children's novel for which she is probably best known today. In 1893 she published a memoir of her youth, The One I Knew Best of All. From the mid-1890s she lived mainly in England, and in particular at Great Maytham Hall (from 1897 to 1907) where she really did discover a secret garden, but in 1909 she moved back to the United States, after having become a U.S. citizen in 1905.

After her first son's death of consumption in 1890, Burnett delved into spiritualism and apparently found this a great comfort in dealing with her grief (she had previously dabbled in Theosophy, and some of its concepts are worked into The Secret Garden, where a crippled boy thinks he can heal himself through positive thinking and affirmations). Although in mourning and though she refused requests for interviews, reporters continued to write about her, criticizing her trips, marriage, son, books, clothing, and linked her name romantically with many of her male friends.

During World War I, Burnett put her beliefs about what happens after death into writing with her novella The White People. She lived for the last 17 years of her life in Plandome, New York. In later years, public sentiment and reporters turned against her in full and she renewed her efforts to live out of the spotlight. Her last public appearance was the screening of Little Lord Fauntleroy the film in 1921, starring Mary Pickford. She died at the age of 74 on October 29, 1924.

Adaptor: Marsha Norman (Book/Lyrics)

Marsha Norman (born 1947) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. She received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her troubling play 'night, Mother. She has written the book and lyrics for such Broadway musicals as: The Secret Garden, The Red Shoes, as well as the libretto for the recent hit musical The Color Purple.

Norman was born in Louisville, Kentucky. As a child her mother forbade her to watch television or movies, or play with other children. This solitary childhood is sometimes credited with providing the inspiration to become a writer. After graduating from College she began working as a journalist for The Louisville Times newspaper, and writing for Kentucky Educational Television.

Norman’s first play Getting Out, deals with a young woman just paroled after serving an eight-year prison sentence for robbery, kidnapping and manslaughter, and reflects Norman's experience working with disturbed adolescents at Kentucky's Central State Hospital.

Norman's success with Getting Out led her to move to New York City where she continued to write for the Actor's Theatre of Louisville. Her next play, 'night, Mother, would turn out to be her best-known work given its initial success on Broadway and the star-powered film version. The play, dealing frankly with the subject of suicide, won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as the Drama Desk Award among others. Norman also wrote the book and lyrics for the musical version of The Secret Garden, and won the Tony Award for Best Book in 1991.

Norman currently serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School in New York City, and is Vice-President of the Dramatists Guild of America. She has also written occasional screenplays for episodes of the HBO series In Treatment.

Adaptor: Lucy Simon (Music)

Lucy Simon (born 1943) is the older sister of musician Carly Simon. She began her professional career at the age of sixteen as a musical duo with her sister. Lucy Simon’s first theatrical exposure as a composer were songs for the off-B’way show A... My Name is Alice in 1983. She made her Broadway debut as the composer of The Secret Garden, for which she was nominated for a 1991 Tony Award for Best Original Score and a 1991 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music.

Her parents were Richard L. Simon, co-founder of the publishing house Simon & Schuster and Andrea Heinemann Simon. In addition to her younger sister Carly, she has an older sister, opera singer Joanna, and a younger brother photographer Peter. Simon grew up in Fieldston, a section of Riverdale in the Bronx. Married to psychoanalyst David Levine, she has two children. She attended the Fieldston School, graduating in 1958 and Bennington College.

Simon's setting of the poem, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod has been recorded by many diverse artists, including: The Doobie Brothers, Mitzie Collins, and The Big Three (Cass Elliot, Tim Rose, and James Hendricks). In the seventies, Simon made two singer/songwriter-styled albums for RCA Records, the self-titled Lucy Simon, followed by Stolen Time.

She has won a Grammy award in 1981 together with her husband, David Levine, in the Best Recording for Children category for In Harmony/A Sesame Street Record, and again in 1983 in the same category for In Harmony 2. Ms. Simon also wrote and produced the songs and soundtrack for the multi-award winning HBO movie, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom.

In 2006, she composed the music for a musical theatre setting of the Russian novel Dr. Zhivago, which was successfully workshopped at the La Jolla Playhouse. The show in collaboration with Michael Weller and Des McAnuff, is currently being reworked for a New York debut.

Production History

The Secret Garden is a musical based on the 1909 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The musical's book and lyrics are by Marsha Norman, with music by Lucy Simon. It premiered at the St. James Theatre on Broadway on April 5th, 1991 and closed on January 3rd, 1993. It logged a very successful run of 709 performances.

Directed by Susan H. Schulman with choreography by Michael Lichtefeld, the cast featured Daisy Eagan as Mary, and Mandy Patinkin as Archibald Craven. It won the 1991 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical, Best Featured Actress in a Musical (Daisy Eagan), and Best Scenic Design (Heidi Landesman). Eagan at age 11 was the youngest female recipient of a Tony Award. Her film work as an adult includes Losing Isaiah, Ripe and Tony n' Tina's Wedding. She has appeared on television in episodes of Without a Trace, The Unit, Ghost Whisperer, among others.

The musical was produced in Australia in 1995 in Brisbane (opened on 27 July 1995), Sydney (opened on 7 September 1995), and Melbourne (opened on 20 December 1995). Directed by Schulman and with sets by Landesman, the cast starred Philip Quast as Neville Craven and Anthony Warlow as Archibald Craven.

A heavily revised Royal Shakespeare Company production ran at Stratford (UK) from November 13, 2000 until January 27, 2001, with Philip Quast and Meredith Braun and directed by Adrian Noble. The RSC production transferred soon to the West End, running from February 2001 until June 2001.

In the years since The Secret Garden opened, its moving story and glorious score have become justly celebrated.

Friday, April 26, 1991
Review; 'Garden': The Secret Of Death And Birth
By Frank Rich, The New York Times

In "The Secret Garden," the new musical at the St. James, a devoted team of theater artists applies a heap of talent and intelligence to the task of bringing Frances Hodgson Burnett's beloved children's novel of 1911 to the stage. They have accomplished that basic mission, all right, but whether "The Secret Garden" is a compelling dramatic adaptation of its source or merely a beautiful, stately shrine to it is certain to be a subject of intense audience debate.

At its heart, after all, "The Secret Garden" tells a simple story that is endemic not only to children's literature, but also to such Broadway staples as "The Sound of Music." In the musical version, this tale's primal pull is often severed at its roots. Worse, Burnett's exciting recounting of the obstacles Mary must overcome to enter the locked garden is shortchanged in Ms. Norman's script, and so, eventually, is the garden itself. The actual stage time devoted to this show's equivalent of Oz is brief, and the climactic, moving song about the garden's transforming powers, the equivalent to the "garden" songs of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" and "Trouble in Tahiti," for instance, never arrives.

Fanatical devotees of the Burnett novel, young and old, are likely to enjoy the evening anyway, while those who have never heard of "The Secret Garden" or those who don't quite hold it in the same high regard as, say, the "Iliad" or "Charlotte's Web," may be either baffled or bored by it. At its best, this show may not be a transporting entertainment like the MG- M "Wizard of Oz" or Broadway "Peter Pan," but it can certainly be considered a musical-theater equivalent to a profusely illustrated, and perhaps even more profusely annotated, edition of a children's classic. Is it too churlish to wish that they turned the pages a little faster?

© 1991, The New York Times.

Other Adaptations

On Film: The first film adaptation was released in 1919 by the Famous Players - Lasky Corporation, with 17 year old Lila Lee as Mary and Paul Willis as Dickon. No surviving prints of the film currently exist.

In 1949, MGM filmed the second adaptation entirely on its Culver City, CA sound stages. It stars Margaret O'Brien, Dean Stockwell, and Herbert Marshall. This version was primarily in black-and-white, with sequences set in the restored garden filmed in Technicolor, much like the earlier Wizard of Oz.

The most acclaimed film adaptation is American Zoetrope's 1993 production. It was directed by Agnieszka Holland and stars Kate Maberly as Mary, Heydon Prowse as Colin, Andrew Knott as Dickon, Dame Maggie Smith as Mrs. Medlock, and John Lynch as Archibald Craven. Yorkshire's imposing Allerton Castle stood in for most of the exterior shots of Misselthwaite Manor, and some of the interior was also used.

On Television: English writer Dorothea Brooking adapted the book into several different television serials for the BBC: an eight-part serial in 1952, a eight-part serial in 1960, and a seven-part serial in 1975.

In 1987, Hallmark Hall of Fame filmed a TV adaptation of the novel starring Gennie James as Mary and Jadrien Steele as Colin. Sir Derek Jacobi played the role of Archibald Craven, with Alison Doody appearing in flashbacks and visions as Lilias; a young Colin Firth also makes a brief appearance as the adult Colin Craven.

About English Gardens

The English garden is a style of landscape garden which emerged in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, soon replacing the more staid, formal, symmetrical gardening style of the continent. The English garden presented an idealized view of nature. It usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. It also had a major influence on the form of the public parks and gardens, which appeared around the world in the 19th century.

The predecessors of the landscape garden in England were the great parks Castle Howard, Blenheim Palace and Claremont House. These parks featured vast lawns, woods, and pieces of architecture. These gardens, modeled after the gardens of Versailles in France, were designed to impress visitors with their size and grandeur.

Topiary within the English Garden remains popular. It is the art of creating sculptures in the medium of clipped trees and shrubbery. European topiary dates from Roman times. Within the atrium of a Roman house or villa, a place that had formerly been quite plain, the art of the topiary produced a miniature landscape for the city bound ancients to enjoy.

From its European revival in the 16th century, topiary has historically been associated with both the gardens of the European elite and equally as features in ordinary cottage gardens. Traditional topiary forms use foliage that is pruned and or trained into geometric shapes: balls, cubes, obelisks, pyramids, cones, tapering spirals, and the like. Representational forms also can depict people and various animals.

The Secret Garden Dramaturgy © 2009 Ross Harmon