May 30, 2008 6 min read

FLATWOODS – Flatwoods Productions announces “The Secret Garden” on June 20-22. Performances will be held at the Curfew Grange building, located off Route 201 south and Buena Vista Road (across from the cemetery).

Curtain times will be at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with a matinee at 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are available. For reservations, call 724- 366-7923.

Dinner will be available before each performance with advance reservations of at least a day. This time, in addition to the usual choices of stuffed chicken breast or roast beef, the meal will be presented as a “high tea” in keeping with the British tradition of the show.

In addition to the regular items offered – soup, salad, entr?e, mashed potatoes, vegetable, beverage and dessert – there also will be scones (English biscuits) and cornbread and various cakes and cookies for dessert. And, of course, the option of a hot pot of tea will be offered. Iced tea also will be available if the weather becomes too warm.

As the story begins it is 1906 in India. Mary Lennox, a 10-year-old English girl who has been raised in India, dreams of nursery rhymes and Indian chants (“Opening”) and awakens to find her parents have died of cholera.

She is found by survivors and sent to live with her uncle, whom she’s never met (“There’s a Girl”). Mary is met in Yorkshire by Mrs. Medlock, housekeeper to her Uncle Archibald, a hunchback who has been inconsolable since his wife Lily’s death (“The House Upon the Hill”).

Mary has difficulty sleeping her first night there (“I Heard Someone Crying”) as she and Archibald both mourn their losses. The next morning, Mary meets Martha, the chambermaid who entices Mary outside with tales of the gardens (“If I Had a Fine White Horse”), in particular, a secret hidden garden. Meanwhile, Archibald continues to wallow in his memories of Lily (“A Girl In the Valley”).

Mary discovers the garden, laid out in Victorian style as a topiary maze, as do gardener Ben and Martha’s brother, Dickon, each with his own agenda (“It’s a Maze”), however, it has been locked since Lily’s death as it reminds Archibald of her.

Dickon is something of a druis who comes to invoke the spring (“Winter’s On the Wing”). He claims to converse with animals and teaches Mary to speak the Yorkshire dialect to a robin (“Show Me the Key”). The bird, with Dickon’s help, leads Mary to the key for the garden, but does not show Mary the door.

Archibald has a formal meeting with his niece, who asks him for “A Bit of Earth” to plant a garden of her own. He is startled and compares her to Lily.

As the Yorkshire gloom turns to rain (“Storm I”), the audience meets Archibald’s younger brother and physician Neville. He and Archibald both notice that Mary resembles her aunt (“Lily’s Eyes”), and the audience learns that Neville had an unrequited love for Lily as well.

As the rain continues, Mary again hears someone crying (“Storm II”), but this time she finds him – her cousin Colin, confined to bed since birth, during which his mother Lily died. He has been in bed his entire life because Archibald feared that Colin also would become a hunch back.

Colin’s spine is perfectly fine, but his father is conviced that he has passed on his curse. Colin confides in his cousin his dreams of “A Round-Shouldered Man” who comes to him at night and reads to him from his book “of all that’s good and true.”

However, just as it seems they have become friends, Neville and Mrs. Medlock burst in, intending to give Colin his nightly shot and dismiss her angrily, telling her she is never to see Colin again. As the storm reaches its peak, Mary runs outside and finds the garden (“Final Storm”).

Act II begins with Mary dreaming of a birthday party being thrown in her honor with all the living and dead together at last. She has a reverie about “The Girl I Mean to Be,” with “a place I can go when I am lost.”

In reality, the garden is like her uncle and Mary herself – neglected and overgrown. It seems dead. Archibald relates his dream to Neville, a dream with Lily and Mary together in the garden. But Neville’s dreams are darker, recalling Lily spurning him. Neville looks to the day when Archibald leaves for good, and the house becomes Neville’s (“Quartet”). At Neville’s urging, Archibald agrees to send Mary to a boarding school and then leaves for the Continent, pausing only to read his son a fairy tale as Colin sleeps (“Race You To the Top of the Morning”). Mary asks Dickon for help with the garden. Dickon explains that it is probably just dormant and that “somewhere there’s a single streak of green inside it” (“Wick”).

After conversing with Colin about the discovered garden, Mary, Dickon and Martha clandestinely bring Colin in his wheelchair to the garden, as the ghost of his mother sings to him and with him (“Come to My Garden/Lift Me Up”).

In the garden, the exercise and fresh air begin to make Colin well (“Come Spirit, Come Charm”). The dreamers sing the praises of the renewed garden (“A Bit of Earth (Reprise”). Back in the house, Mary faces down Neville as he tells her of her uncle’s plans to send her away to school. Martha tells Mary she must “Hold On.” Mary writes a letter to Archibald (“Letter Song”) urging him to come home. At first he feels defeated and frustrated (“Where In the World”), but Lily’s ghost convinces him to return (“How Could I Ever Know”). Entering the garden, he finds Colin completely healthy. In fact, he is beating Mary in a footrace as Archibald walks through the door. Archibald, a changed man, accepts Mary as his own, and the dreamers invite all to “stay here in the garden” (“Finale”).

For reservations for dinner and the show or just the show, call 724-366-7923. Tickets also available at the door.