The Secret Garden review – thoughtful adaptation takes root in the imagination

The beloved children’s perennial is the basis for a celebration of craft, creativity and the beauty of the natural world in this charming puppetry production

The Egg theatre celebrates its 20th anniversary with Tom Wentworth’s thoughtful but fitful adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved book. As Mary and her friends nurture their secret garden, animal puppets play amid the audience and flowers pop up across a green-washed stage. It’s all very charming – particularly when Cat Rock’s beautiful puppets skip, soar and dart around the theatre. There’s a plucky robin, a majestic owl and a ridiculously lovable fluffy lamb. All the puppets are frayed around the edges with the original fabric exposed; a celebration of craft and creation just as much as the beauty of the natural world.

The puppets are complemented by a striking design from Kat Heath and evocative music from composer Ben Osborn. The Yorkshire Moors around Misselthwaite Manor, where Mary is sent after being orphaned, are brought to life using curtains of fabric and giant gloves with long spindly fingers, worn by actors and swaying wildly in the wind. It’s quite unusual work, which sometimes makes the young audience giggle but gradually takes a hold of the imagination.

Where the show falters is in the storytelling, which never establishes a natural rhythm or focus. Wentworth has written a fair bit for TV and the scenes are relentlessly short and choppy. Director Stephanie Kempson has chosen to highlight the endless scene changes, with the actors chatting as they move about the set. This only makes things more disjointed and the important beats of young Mary’s story, as well as her cousin Colin’s, are lost amid the bustle.

Bilqees Khalid is a sparky and charismatic Mary but the script has softened her character too much around the edges. Jack Hunter’s bedbound cousin Colin is luminously innocent but again lacks the darker edges – all that anger and frightening vulnerability – that make him so memorable in Hodgson Burnett’s book. The smaller characters are more intriguing. Daneka Etchells’ Martha is kind but never cloying and Martin Bonger’s characters have bite and depth. His doctor is proud and cruel; his uncle lost and heartbroken; his Ben Weatherstaff fierce but kind. It is in Bonger’s scenes – particularly the darkly brooding encounters between the Doctor and a sickly Colin – that this production is elevated from a lovely aesthetic experience to a boldly captivating story.