REVIEW: The Secret Garden
By Andy Wright


THE latest cast of Stardust Performing Arts made a welcome return to the stage at the Eastgate Theatre last month to perform The Secret Garden to a rapturous audience reaction.

The cast members, aged from 5-14 years old, who started their rehearsals last October, were excited to be finally return to Peebles.

For many, it was their first time performing on stage – which makes the quality and high standard of their performance of the sold-out show that much more remarkable.

There were no signs of nerves as Holly Fraser, playing the role of Mary Lennox, confidently opened the show in front of the theatre curtains with a sublime solo of the show’s main musical theme.

The other cast principals were Coco Turnbull (playing Colin), Lana Boyd (Dickon) and Grace Clarke (Mrs Medlock). The Yorkshire accent of Grace was superb – you really did think that you were somewhere in Yorkshire where the mythical ‘Misselthwaite Manor’ was located.

The Secret Garden is a much-loved children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in book form in 1911.

Common sense, truth, kindness, compassion and a belief in the essential goodness of human beings lie at the heart of this unforgettable story.

It is the best known of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s work and has been adapted extensively on stage, film and television and translated into all the world’s major languages.

The novel centres on Mary Lennox, who is living in India with her wealthy British family. She is a selfish and disagreeable 10-year-old girl who has been spoiled by her servants and neglected by her unloving parents. When a cholera epidemic kills her parents and the servants, Mary is orphaned and is sent to England to live with a widowed uncle, Archibald Craven, at his huge Yorkshire estate, Misselthwaite Manor. Her uncle is rarely at Misselthwaite, however. Mary is put off when she finds that the chambermaid, Martha, is not as servile as the servants in India. But she is intrigued by Martha’s stories about her own family, particularly those about her 12-year-old brother, Dickon, who has a nearly magical way with animals. When Mary hears about the late Mrs Craven’s walled garden, which was locked 10 years earlier by the uncle upon his wife’s death, Mary is determined to find it. One day, while following a friendly robin, Mary discovers an old key that she thinks may open the locked garden. Shortly thereafter, she spots the door in the garden wall, and she lets herself into the secret garden. She finds that it is overgrown with dormant rose bushes and vines, but she spots some green shoots, and with Dickon’s help she begins clearing and weeding in that area.

Mary continues to tend the garden. Her interaction with nature spurs a transformation: she becomes kinder, more considerate, and outgoing. Mary also uncovers the source of the strange sounds she has been hearing in the mansion. They are the cries of her supposedly sick 10-year-old cousin, her uncle’s son Colin, who has been confined to the house and tended to by servants. He and Mary become friends, and she discovers that Colin does not have a spinal deformation, as he has believed. Dickon and Mary take Colin to see the garden, and there he discovers that he is able to stand. The three children explore the garden together and plant seeds to revitalise it, and, through their friendship and interactions with nature, they grow healthier and happier. When her uncle returns and sees the amazing transformation that has occurred to his son and his formerly abandoned garden now in bloom, he embraces his family, as well as their rejuvenated outlook on life.

Stardust Performing Arts is the Musical Theatre section of the multi award-winning Fiona Henderson School of Dance (FHSD). Weekly Stardust classes take place in Biggar and Peebles and students receive coaching in the three elements of musical theatre of singing, acting and dance.

Cast list: Mary Lennox - Holly Fraser; Colin - Coco Turnbull; Dickon - Lana Boyd; Mrs Medlock - Grace Clarke; Mrs Sowerby - Rose Turnbull; Martha - Millie Jefferson; Betty - Bebe Mitchell; Jane - Eden Beaumont; John - Taylor Cunningham; Archibald Craven - Grace Kane; Nurse - Rosie Whitehouse; Dr Craven - Ailish Hutchison; Lilias - Lara Moncrieff; Cook - Rowan McNamara; Mrs Crawford - Lily Russell; Miss Wiggin - Hope Watson; Kanchi - Tilly McNeilly; Phil - Ruby Burgess; Maids - Minnie Mitchell and Faith Salmond.

Chorus: Alice Wiseman, Anna Moody, Bailey Todd, Bonnie Harvey, Elsie Mclellan, Emmeline Crompton, Hannah Russell, Jessica Maclachlan, Laura Dube, Martha Rowlands, Morgan Cunningham, Morven Hutchison, Neive Ward, Orla Cox, Pollaidh Harvey, Sophie Mihulka, Willow Brownrigg.