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The Secret Garden (Susan Elkin reviews)

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.

Kalla and Neruda Quartets

Royal Academy of Music

Lunchtime concert, 24 February 2026

The advertised work in this pleasing concert was the Mendelssohn Octet, but it began with the Kalla Quartet playing Beethoven Op 18 no 3. Their cellist explained at the beginning that this was the fruition of a recent five-day training session at Minterne House in Dorset with Marije Johnston who teaches them at the Royal Academy of Music along with her husband Magnus (Concert master at Royal Opera House) and brother-in-law Guy who is a renowned international cellist.

That input certainly showed. Their tone, especially from the viola (who is an outstandingly collaborative player) was pleasing. They managed the rubato in the second movement with cohesion and there was some lovely cello work. The third movement, in 3/4 but not quite a minuet and trio, came with verve and the final  presto rose to an exciting climax before the witty Haydnesque ending. It was an enjoyable effort with only one or two infelicitous moments.

They were then joined by the Neruda Quartet for Mendelssohn’s remarkable Octet, famously written in 1825 when he was only sixteen,  All players apart from cellos stood for this performance which, as always, freed up the music and the interpretation because it allows much more body movement and eye contact. Highlights included the intricate, silken beauty of the second movement which came out pretty well as did the exposed first violin solos although everyone is a soloist here. I liked the way these young players brought lightness and tension (shades of A Midsummer Night’s Dream concert overture which came a year later) to the third movement and they played the finale, complete with Messiah quotes, with impressive youthful energy.

Of course these students must breathe with the music – as singers and wind players do. It’s crucial to phrasing and no doubt they’ve been encouraged in it since childhood. They should, however, not do it so loudly that the audience can hear it as if it were part of the texture of the music. At times in this concert it sounded as if there were a fault in the central heating or air conditioning.

That may have been exacerbated by the sensitive acoustic of the Angela Burgess Recital Room which I hadn’t been in before. It’s at the top of the building in the new extension and it’s a very beautiful space whose design allowed me to hear every note on every instrument without any kind of fuzziness or echo which was an unusual delight.

 

I read it as a child. And now I look at how wordy Beecher Stowe’s unexpurgated version is, I’m pretty sure that it must have must been an abridged version that the 10 or 11 year old me read.  Then  Petroc Trelawny recently remarked on Radio 3 (I can’t remember the context) that nobody reads Uncle Tom’s Cabin any more. “Watch me,” I thought and ordered a paperback, since my late husband’s old copy, inscribed by a Deptford ancestor in 1854, was too foxed to see clearly and rather too fragile to handle.

Well in literary terms it isn’t much of a novel. Published in 1852, it was written with one intention: to expose the evils of slavery. It’s overtly didactic (the final chapter is effectively a sermon), characterisation often relies on stereotype and the plotting is weak. There are far too many characters whose lives don’t really intersect. They’re there to reinforce the Beecher Stowe message – and it’s an intensely powerful, painful one.  That’s the whole point.

Moreover, it’s full of what has become the most emotive word in English because that’s how black people were referred to. It was also how most of them refereed to each other. In 1852 it was a descriptor rather than an insult. It’s no good getting vexed about it.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (I reviewed Joan D Hedrick‘s biography in 1994 when I was doing a fair amount of work for Literary Review) came from a family of evangelical preachers and married a theologian. They lived in Maine where she, aged 39, in 1850 was bringing up five children and expecting another while writing bland, pious, short stories in her spare time. Slavery had already been abolished in the British Empire in 1833 and she fretted angrily about its continuation in the southern US states. Uncle Tom’s Cabin hammers home its evangelical agenda with commendable energy, even when it lacks plausibility.

It tells many stories, often clumsily left and returned to, like a poorly structured TV soap.  The central character is the titular Tom although he disappears from view for quite long stretches. He and his family live happily together in Kentucky, the property of a Mr Shelby. Tom is decently treated, has a lot of responsibility and is, at a stretch, almost a family friend. But people in his position are never totally secure. Shelby gets into debt. Tom is his most valuable asset so, reluctantly, he is “sold down the river” – an expression I doubt I’ll ever be able to use again in the casual modern sense of being let down or conned.  And every slave knows that conditions down in, for example, New Orleans are often appalling.  Actually Tom strikes lucky with his first southern owner, a complicated man who doesn’t really believe in the system he’s trapped in so his servants/slaves have a pretty free rein. Beecher Stowe captures his position rather well although the lengthy discussions with his abolitionist cousin from the North are laboured. At least he has a sense of humour, though and that’s rare in this novel.  Then the worst happens because the benign owner dies and his unfeeling widow simply sells Tom (and others) to the highest bidder. The outcome is deeply, hideously distressing.

The thing about Tom, though, is his Christ-like commitment to forgiveness and wanting everyone to repent of their sins and go the heaven he believes in so passionately – despite the terrible things they do to him. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. His pious passivity gets wearing.

Punctuating this narrative are many other stories quite vividly told. Cassie, with her long experience of sexual abuse is a strong character. Eva, though, is much too saccharine for the modern reader – she takes almost us into allegory territory.  Even Dickens (Bleak House was published the same year as Uncle Tom’s Cabin) would never have sentimentalised a child quite as much as Beecher Stowe does sickly, golden haired Eva.

By far the best character in the novel is Topsy. Her defensive truculence and vulnerability are instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever worked with troubled children although her dramatic path to Christian redemption and a better life doesn’t quite ring true. It reminds me, in a sense, of Mad Margaret in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore: “I’ve given up all my wild proceedings”. But that, of course, is meant to be a comedy.

It’s easy to find fault with Uncle Tom’s Cabin but it’s worth reading for what it achieved. It sold 10,000 copies in its first week. Within a year nearly 300,000 had been sold in America and close to a million in England – including the one bought by, or given to, my husbands’ forebear. Many translations meant that by 1860 Beecher Stowe was the most famous writer in the world. And, thank goodness, it changed the way people thought. There is a story that when she met Abraham Lincoln in 1862 he said “Oh and here’s the little lady who started this great war”. It’s probably apocryphal but it summarises the feeling during America’s Civil War which was largely predicated on the slavery issue.  Slavery was formally abolished in the US in 1865  but, as we all know,  the ensuing battle for true equality continues. The aftermath of slavery is still with us 174 years after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Shock of the Light by Lori Inglis Hall

Lonely Angel

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

Violin: Ruth Rogers

Viola: Sascha Bota

Conductor/Piano: Joanna MacGregor

Brighton Dome, 22 February 2026

This delightful concert belonged to the charismatic, smiley, talented Ruth Rogers who played violin solo in two works and led the orchestra in another. And she shines whatever she does.

But we started, presumably while Rogers limbered up, with a short work led by the orchestra’s assistant leader Nicky Sweeney:  another richly accomplished player. The Romanian Folk Dances – a miniature six part suite – is one of Bartok’s best known works and it was played here by BPO strings (reduced numbers throughout this concert) standing, rather than sitting, which made the music feel much freer. Sweeney played the solos with plenty of Romanian verve and inspired the orchestra to do the same. It’s a work which makes a good concert opener, and it’s nice to see strings in the limelight.

Then Rogers appeared, wearing the sparkliest dress I have ever seen, with viola player Sascha Bota to play Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E flat major. K364. And what a pleasure it was.  Both players played along with their respective sections until it was time for their solo passages, in the traditional manner.  They then treated us to a musical conversation leaning in to each other, smiling and exuding musical rapport. In the second movement Joanna MacGregor, now conducting but without a podium, paid careful attention to dynamics which allowed us to enjoy the mellow delicacy of Bota’s playing along with some pleasing horn work and enough warmth to toast crumpets on.  That musical camaderie continued in the Presto with lots of lightness, joy and laughter. And, for once, the happy hugs at the end felt genuine rather than perfunctory.

After the interval we were plunged  into a different sound world with Lonely Angel: Mediation for violin and string orchestra by Peteris Vasks, the 12 minute work which gave this concert its title.  It’s an evocative piece in which Rogers played the plangent legato passages with ethereal (angelic?), silvery energy –  and astonishing control. Her series of harmonics at the very top of the instrument carried impressive resonance. The sotto voce accompaniment is, I’m sure, challenging to sustain but of course MacGregor ensured that it worked.

And finally once the indefatigable Rogers had slipped back on stage in a plain black dress we were off into the Mozart’s G minor Piano concerto with MacGregor at the key board co-conducting with Rogers in the leader’s seat. The collaborative work in this concert was very striking and I was left wondering whether some of it really was down to most women being better at multi-tasking than most men along with the ability to  leave their egos at home. But that may be over-simplistic.

My mild synesthesia paints anything in G Minor slate blue and that certainly applied to this performance in which MacGregor treated us to the thunderous Beethoven cadenzas. It was a fine rendering with beautiful balance between the horn and flute in the last movement. And that chirpy wind melody which is several times echoed by the piano and always makes me beam (as well as providing an ear worm for the rest of the day) was played here with cheerful insouciance.

 

LPO: Anne-Sophie Mutter plays Tchaikovsky – Southbank Centre, London

Reviewer: Susan Elkin
The Reviews Hub - LondonBy 

Anne-Sophie Mutter Image Credit: Japan Arts

Art Museums & Galleries

Conductor: Karina Canellakis

The concert opens with Pohjola’s Daughter, a Sibelius tone poem which doesn’t get out very often. Rooted in the Finnish national epic, Kalevala, it tells the story of an old man travelling home from the north and having mystic experiences on the way. The resonant, growling  cello solo (Waynne Kwon) at the opening is arresting in this performance as is the arresting string work which follows. And conductor Karina Canellakis really allows the grandiloquent brass, of which Sibelius was so fond, to sing out.

The high spot, though, comes next when Anne-Sophie Mutter, a slender column in elegant sky blue, arrives to play Tchaikovsky’s  violin concerto to rapturous, excited, applause. She has been such a huge influence on  music and music education for so long it’s a struggle to remember that she’s still only 62.  With nothing to prove, she’s an unshowy, collaborative performer frequently turning to orchestra, conductor and audience.

Mutter plays a golden, gleaming Stradivarius instrument without shoulder rest and rather, sweetly, hangs the duster she uses for part of the performance on the back of the leading desk’s music stand and keeps her mute on the corner of the conductor’s stand.

Her first movement cadenza is full of musical acrobatics and the accuracy and beauty of the sequences of harmonics breathtaking. The resolving tension in the long trill which prefaces the orchestra pick up is nicely nuanced. The muted Canzonetta movement, effectively a duet with flute (Tom Hancox) is a delight. Then comes the gravelly segue into the high-speed Finale and more spectacular harmonics from Mutter. No wonder the audience goes wild at the end.

Mutter is a communicator at every level, Once the applause subsides she takes a microphone and thanks the LPO for their fine playing and makes a few moving remarks about the power of music to unite “a troubled and divided world” before announcing her encore. Andre Previn (to whom Mutter was married from 2002-2006) wrote Tango Song and Dance in 1997 as a violin and piano piece, and later orchestrated it. Perhaps because it was written for her, she plays it with smiling panache. Her fabulous virtuosity shines through but also feels warmly modest.

Famously described by Wagner as “the apotheosis of the dance,” Beethoven’s seventh symphony certainly dances under Karina Canellakis’s baton. We get tender exuberance, sensible tempi and meticulous attention to every detail. Also a violinist, Canellakis has exceptionally expressive fingers. She beats time with her right hand, signals with her left and creates rhythmic, often geometric, shapes with her arms and body. It’s captivating to watch the LPO’s principal guest conductor weaving her spells.

Highlights in the Beethoven include oboe playing (Emanuel Abbuhl) in the opening movement and the build-up of the relentless main theme in the Allegretto, arguably one of the best movements the composer ever wrote.  Also noteworthy are the horns in the third movement and the  hard stick timp work (Marney O’Sullivan) throughout. And as for the Finale, it is played here with all the brio that Beethoven could have wanted, especially in the lively string playing and the thrill of the final bars.

Reviewed on 18 February 2026

The Reviews Hub Star Rating: 4.5

90%

90%

Mutter’s musical magic

Mrs Armitage on Wheels – Purcell Room, Southbank Centre

By  on Friday, 20 February, 2026 in Onstage, Review

Picture: Dan Tsantilis

Rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Like most shows of this sort for very young children, this one is full of charm and wit. It relies, moreover, on most of the young audience and their grown-ups being familiar with Quentin Blake’s book. Thus, it feels homely.

The titular Mrs Armitage (Gillian Kirkpatrick) is a cheerful inventor living in a shed with her dog, Breakspear (Thomas Walton). The episodic story celebrates creativity, imagination, kindness, recycling and the strength of community if everyone helps everyone else.

The songs (Jessie Maryon Davies) are jolly. “The right sort of horn will warn” is very funny and Kirkpatrick makes sure we hear every word. Her warm RP works well in the spoken dialogue too. And …

Read the rest of this review at Musical Theatre Review; https://musicaltheatrereview.com/mrs-armitage-on-wheels-purcell-room-southbank-centre-2/

Mrs Armitage on Wheels continues at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London until 21 February 2026.

 

The Bodyguard – New Wimbledon Theatre, London

Reviewer: Susan Elkin
The Reviews Hub - LondonBy 

Sidonie Smith and Adam Garcia. Credit Paul Coltas

Book: Alexander Dinelaris

Additional Music: Chris Egan

Director: Thea Sharrock

You can’t fault it for crowd pleasing. The 1992 film has become, for many, an iconic classic and several of the songs were global, award-winning hits. Spectacular staging with Mark Henderson’s lighting and Richard Brookner’s sound plus pyrotechnics gets it off to a bang – literally.

The plot is a simplified version of the film. Rachel Marron (Sidonie Smith) is an A list star, being threatened by a toxic stalker (James Lee-Harris): cue for lots of Woman in Black-style sinister ubiquity.  So Rachel’s manager imposes a bodyguard, Frank Farmer (Adam Garcia) on her. At first she is reluctant to accept the intrusion but eventually they fall in love.  Alas, there’s no happy ending – just a final passionate parting.  Also in the mix are her young son Fletcher ( Cale Cole on press night – very good), her envious sister Nicki and the existing security man whose nose is out of joint, among others.

Smith is a fine singer and very good at catching mood which she packs with emotion. And her range is impressive, whether she is strutting her character’s professional stuff in performances and recordings or reflecting gently and privately at home. Garcia provides a good down-to-earth contrast and makes it clear why chemistry soon stirs between them.

Because this is a show, partly, about show business there is plenty of scope for big, bone-rattlingly loud set pieces in which Smith is supported by a terrific dance ensemble. Choreographed by Karen Bruce, who clearly loves geometric shapes, they are rivetingly, sinuously, show-stealingly athletic.

Henderson’s rotating spots which sweep the audience like dazzling car headlights are unpleasant. At other times there are glitzy frames for Rachel’s performances and lots of murky corners in the “real life” scenes.

The show includes a rather good scene in a karaoke bar. If you can sing perfectly in tune, as every member of this cast can, it is actually pretty difficult to sing off key. Three ensemble members do it here to comic effect followed by Garcia’s Frank, It’s effective comedy hooked into poignancy because eventually Rachel, hitherto anonymous as Frank’s date, sings.

Full marks to stage management. This is a slick show with many scene and costume changes which are impressively seamless.

What happened, however, to putting the press in good seats so that they get a clear view of what they’re reviewing? The sightlines at New Wimbledon Theatre are dreadful from Dress Circle J6.

Runs until 21 February and tours until 15 August 2026

The Reviews Hub Star Rating: 3

60%

60%

Loudness, love and leaps

Elmore Quartet

Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome, 15 February 2026

Strings Attached

It was an ambitious programme – three full string quartets, one late eighteenth century and one early nineteenth, sandwiching a dramatically different twentieth century offering

We began with Haydn Op 76, no 5 nicknamed “The Largo” because of its second movement. As in most Haydn quartets there is a virtuosic. very exposed, first violin part – I have murdered many of them myself in private so I’m very aware of the challenges. It was, therefore, a real pleasure to hear that part, in Xander Croft’s capable hands, waving its magic over the top of the texture before the melody is shared round in the opening movement. The deceptively simple largo came with rich warmth and a lot of elegance especially in Gabriel Franci-Dehgani’s cello playing. The Elmore quartet’s playing more than complemented the intricacy of the writing here.  There was more bravura, but suitably insouciant, high-speed cello playing in the trio.  And the presto finale, which sounds like a very jolly Austrian village party and builds to a dance, was fun. It came with lots of very attentive rapport between players especially in the repeated note motif which was always delivered with escalating excitement.

Then we were plunged into a completely different sound world with Bartok’s String Quartet no 3. It’s through-written in four sections and the Elmore Quartet really ran with the musical special effects that Bartok was able to play with in 1928, 132 years after the premiere of the Haydn. Among other points of interest it includes interrogative glissandi, bowing over the bridge for grating effect, left hand pizzicato, col legno passages and very incisive heavy chords. It’s educative to watch four experts adeptly running with this.

After the interval it was back to the familiarity of Beethoven’s Op 127 no 1. One his “late” quartets. It was written after the 9th Symphony when he was totally deaf.

The Elmore Quartet’s account of the first movement juxtaposed dynamic charm with passion and stressed the rich harmony of the opening big, Eroica-esque chords. The very long, almost unbearably beautiful Aadagio is actually a set of six variations, And like all slow movements, as I know from experience, it’s very diffcicult to bring off. Here it was delivered with immaculate, tender control.  The contrasting third movement found attractive lightness in the complex rhythms and they played the Finale with plenty of freshness and verve.

Each half of this concert was introduced by Inis Oirr Asano (viola_ which was largely unnecessary because most of what she said was in the free programme sheet. Nonetheless, I suppose it makes a Sunday morning concert seem friendlier and less formal,

And perhaps that is important because there were a number of children in the audience. Strings Attached is a Brighton-based charity which produces these concerts. Its mission is to promote chamber music in the city. We were informed, by their spokesperson at the beginning of the concert, that their policy of free tickets for under-25s is paying dividends. Numbers of the young attendees are rising. Hurrah.