It's amazing how five theatrical screens and half a dozen actors can transform the stage at Salford Arts Theatre into a world where magic happens and you believe in the make believe...
The Secret Garden is the classic children's novel, set in Yorkshire but said to have been written by author Frances Hodgson Burnett during visits to Buile Hill Park and Mansion.
Precocious little English snob, Mary Lennox, finds herself sent from India to the lifeless Misselthwaite Manor in culture shock Yorkshire after her parents die; but grows as a person on discovering new lower class friends and, er, a secret garden which has been locked up for years.
Meeting up with her maid's brother, Dickon, old gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, and a friendly robin who shows her the key to the garden, Mary blossoms like the flowers and roses, spreading enchantment into the Manor, and helping her sad uncle's wailing 'invalid' son, Colin, find his happy and un-invalid self.
While The Secret Garden is a charming Edwardian story of hope, social class inversion and self determination, to make it come alive on a stage in the middle of Pendleton is no easy task. But the ace cast, under the direction of Salford Theatre Company's Roni Ellis, transform the stage into a wondrous place, using just five screens and some props, where a robin flies, flowers grow and your heart melts.
Every one of the six actors bring the story superbly to life, from Hazel Wilson, who plays the maid Martha and, nymph-like, works the robin and lays out the garden grass, to Elizabeth Poole who plays the stern house-head Mrs Medlock, to Keenan Groom, who flits the robin in the first half of the drama and plays the bratish Colin after the interval.
Meanwhile, Matthew Forey does the critter-loving Dickon with aplomb, and ace multi-tasking Scott Berry takes on the dual roles of Ben Weatherstaff and the uncle Mr Craven with a limp he has made his own. And what can you say about 18 year old Libby Hall? Not only has she won the Salford Star Award as writer of the Best Drama and the GM Fringe Best Newcomer Award for The Things We Tell The Hours After Midnight, but she also showcases here a faultless, burgeoning career in acting making her professional debut as Mary Lennox. So, hats off to all the cast, director, props and lighting people for bringing The Secret Garden to stage life.
Away from the techno sizzle of Instagram, Facebook, screaming reality tv and blockbuster popcorn films, Frances Hodgson Burnett's story, adapted by Neil Duffield for the stage, is a slow-down treat. Get down to Salford Arts Theatre and lose yourself for a while; dream a little, re-discover the beauty of nature and self, and maybe shed a few tears of a happy ending...
Magic happens...and you'll feel it. It's a proper family show, for the young and wanna-recapture-young...
The Secret Garden
Thursday 18th- Sunday 21st April
Thursday 18th 7pm/ Friday 19th 2pm/ Saturday 20th 2pm/ Sunday 21st 2pm
Salford Arts Theatre
Kemsing Walk, Tunbridge Square, off Liverpool Street, Salford M5 4BS
Tickets £8 child under 16yrs/ £10 Concessions/£12 Adult
£30 family ticket two adults and two children
To book and for more details - click here
Box Office phone 0161 925 0111
Review by Stephen Kingston
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