The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Adapted and directed by Alex Marker
Questors Youth Theatre
Star rating: 3
Questors Youth Theatre is a fine organisation which achieves a pleasing standard. This version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s famous and much-loved 1911 novel provides plenty of scope for a large, well-trained cast.
Alex Marker, who also directs, has adapted the novel with a three-faced Mary Lennox at its heart. Most of the time the device works reasonably well. It suggests that Mary has many moods and personality traits and inner voices. It also means a central role on stage for a trio of identically dressed young actors. All are pretty good with Advika Nair as the strongest of the three – naturalistic, cross and feisty. For Mary has lost both her parents (who neglected her anyway) in a cholera outbreak in India. She is then placed with an absentee, widowed uncle on a Yorkshire estate where she, eventually makes friends and discovers that social class is the least of her worries. She also finds the titular garden – a symbol of loss, discovery and new life, vibrantly lit (Alasdair Graebner) in this production.
Among the many smaller roles, all done thoughtfully, there’s a noteworthy performance from Noa Eloise Archer as Martha, the servant who introduces them to her large local family, especially her brother Dickon (Noah Christi – lots of warmth). Charlotte Green finds plenty of exasperated authority in the housekeeper, Mrs Medlock. And Billy Adcock is good as the gardener, Ben Wetherall.
An ensemble of twenty yields various other roles. It also taunts and haunts Mary in chorus and shunts set items, including some rather effective door frames which line up to represent the inside of the cavernous house.
Puppets, designed by Shaan Latif, represent the wildlife in the garden – including a robin, other birds and a fox – and are very attractive.
It isn’t, however, a show without problems. Marker has decided to make the local Yorkshire accent and dialect a plot strand to represent the vibrant life of local people as opposed to Mary’s “privileged” isolation. Thus most characters speak in it much of the time which is a tall order for a young cast. In general they do pretty well most of the time but there is a tendency to speak too fast so that audibility is often lost. And that is, partly down to the magnificently large thrust playing space in The Playhouse at Questors. It’s almost as large as Chichester Festival Theatre and much bigger than, say the Arcola or the Donmar. And that’s challenging for a youth theatre working with young voices.
Moreover, imaginative as Marker’s adaptation is, there are far too many short scenes which make it bitty. Some are quite peripheral anyway so it could easily have been streamlined.
