Composer
Lucy Simon and lyricist/librettist
Marsha Norman's 1991 stage musical adaptation of
Francis Hodgson Burnett's 1909 children's novel The Secret Garden is at least the third such effort for a work that presumably is out of copyright and thus available to anyone who wishes to take it on. Sharon Burgett seems to have been the first to do so, writing music and co-penning lyrics with Susan Beckwith-Smith and Diana Matterson for a musical mounted in Watford, England, in 1983, and a second British version appeared in 1987 with songs by Diana Morgan and Stephen Marwick.
Simon, a former folk-pop singer (with her sister
Carly Simon in the Simon Sisters), and
Norman, a noted playwright (‘Night Mother), have the advantage of a Broadway production, even though this is the first venture into musicals for both of them. They seem to have tried to cross a large-scale, melodramatic effort in the manner of Les Misérables or The Phantom of the Opera with a show that also would appeal to children. So, this is a musical with a lot of singing ghosts in it. As fans of the book will recall, British pre-adolescent Mary Lennox (Daisy Eagan), the central character, begins the story orphaned by a cholera epidemic in India in the early years of the 20th century, and, necessarily adopted by her uncle Archibald Craven (
Mandy Patinkin), is taken to live at his English estate, Misselthwaite Manor. Unfortunately, Archibald is still in mourning for his wife Lily (
Rebecca Luker), who died in childbirth producing his sickly son Colin (John Babcock).
In
Simon and
Norman's conception, this allows not only for Lily as well as Mary's parents, Rose (Kay Walbye) and Captain Albert Lennox (
Michael De Vries) to have prominent parts as ghosts, but also even the dead family servants, Fakir (Peter Marinos) and Mary's ayah, or nanny (Patricia Phillips). And Archibald gets plenty of stage time, too, even though he isn't actually present at Misselthwaite Manor most of the time, preferring to endure his grief abroad. So, the adults sing soaring ballads (
Patinkin's high tenor gets a lot of exercise) about how unhappy they all are, while Mary gets to trade cute dialect songs with the chambermaid Martha (
Alison Fraser) and Martha's brother Dickon (
John Cameron Mitchell) while searching the estate for the garden of the title. Unfortunately,
Simon's melodies are not distinctive, and
Norman's lyrics are pedestrian, so the cast has to make the best of an average score. They do so, particularly
Luker,
Patinkin, and Eagan (who won a Tony Award, albeit in the Featured Actress category). But this version of The Secret Garden is actually less effective than the Burgett one (which was recorded for a 1986 studio cast album). (Perhaps because it took Columbia Records more than seven months after the April 25, 1991, opening to get this cast album out, the song "Lift Me Up" is sung not by Babcock, whose character performed it on-stage, but by Joel E. Chaiken, originally cast as part of a children's chorus; maybe Babcock's voice had changed in the interim.) [This album is not to be confused with the 1986 cast album, the soundtrack for the 1993 film version with a score by
Zbigniew Preisner, or, naturally, with the score by
Bronislaw Kaper for the 1949 film version. All are entirely different musical treatments associated with the same source material.] ~ William Ruhlmann