The Secret Garden is enchanting for all ages

The opening scene of Shaw Festival Theatre’s The Secret Garden is immediately captivating: an expertly choreographed ensemble shifts a glut of luggage and several black umbrellas to create a believable moving locomotive with working headlight, and seconds after that display, they create a horse-drawn carriage that is delivering an orphaned ten-year-old to her new home.

Fans of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, The Secret Garden, will be delighted with Jay Turvey’s and Paul Sportelli’s adaptation, subtitled A Play With Songs.

When Mary (Gabriella Sindar Singh) loses her parents and governess to cholera, she must move from India to England to live with an uncle who is rarely home, a dismissive housekeeper (Sharry Flett), and a surprise, fragile cousin, Colin (Gryphyn Karimloo).

Mary is arrogant and demanding, but soon yields to maidservant Martha’s (Jaqueline Thair) kind Yorkshire attitude. For the first time ever Mary makes friends, and is soon led to a key that unlocks an enchanting world, a garden that has been hidden since the death of Colin’s mother on the day of his birth.

In fact, all three children in The Secret Garden, Mary, Colin and Dickon (Drew Plummer) are products of mostly parentless families. As they come to learn how to trust each other, and believe in themselves, they discover their own strengths, and grow hardy like the garden’s “narcissuses, jonquils and daffydowndillys.”

Even Colin’s father (David Alan Anderson), Mr Craven, allows himself to love again.

The choreography by movement director Linda Garneau is mesmerizing throughout the entire two-act play. Characters move quickly and with fluidity through hallways and chambers of the family home, and wooden doors double as portrait frames, the kind where the eyes of the subject seem to follow the observer.

The gorgeous costumes, designed by Judith Bowden, add to the beguiling flow of movement and the charming allure of the garden, but it is the skilled puppetry of Robin (Tama Martin) crow, fox and butterflies that allows the audience to believe in magic.

It is hard to believe that all the music is supplied by only five talented musicians on keyboard, cello, harp, percussion and flute, with conductor Ryan deSouza even getting into the action by handing props to characters, as if they have sprouted from the ground.

Turvey, Sportelli and deSouza have chosen traditional songs that enhance the story. Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary, and Bluebells and Cockleshells as well as Scarborough Fair are sung with expertise throughout the play.

Sportelli and Turvey started adapting the novel The Secret Garden at the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic. Like characters in the play, they were forced to spend much time in isolation and “going out for walks became a ritual,” said Turvey in his director’s notes. They noticed nature more, especially “the changing of seasons, the shortening and lengthening of days, (and) the first green shoots of spring.”

The Secret Garden is an enchanting play for young children, and the young at heart. This world premier plays until Oct. 13 at The Royal George Theatre. For more information or tickets visit shawfest.com/playbill/the-secret-garden/