By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
“The Secret Garden” exists between dreams, which are often nightmares, and reality, which is often nightmarish. These realms are stitched together by secrets.
The musical version of the original tale by Frances Hodgson Burnett blossoms with soaring, aching melodies as the characters cope with grief and longing.
The Perrysburg Musical Theatre stages “The Secret Garden,” with book and lyric by Marsha Norman and music by Lucy Simon, Friday, Feb. 9 and Saturday, Feb. 10 at 7 p.m. with a Sunday matinee, Feb. 11 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $17 pre-sale and $20 at the door. Click to buy tickets.
Directed and choreographed by Jess Dougherty with musical direction by Charles Ligus, the PMT production has the voices and acting talent to do justice to this musical drama.
At the center is Mary (Mariko Weese). She is, we are told from the start, a difficult child. Though frail in body, she is head strong. Wafting through the air of her home in India is the nursery rhyme: “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?” This foreshadows what will blossom as the story unfolds.
First there is tragedy. Cholera kills everyone she knows in India. That includes her parents (Neil Terry and Olivia Lemkin), and her nurse, Ayah (Gloria Wang). She is now alone in the world save for an uncle by marriage who lives on the Moors back in London. As British literature would have it (and as we were reminded recently in the Black Swamp Players’ “The Moors), the moors are a place of misfortune and mystery.
Her uncle’s grand house Misselthwaite is no exception.
The uncle, Archibald (Craig Cousino) is still in mourning a decade after his beautiful wife has died. He has no use for his niece who arrives to cold reception. That Mary resembles his wife Lily (Amber Wilkes) makes the situation even worse.
His brother, Neville, who has given up his medical career to tend to Archibald’s sickly son Colin (Sophia Bernard) is even more intent on ridding the house of Mary by sending her off to boarding school.
Lily died at the time of Colin’s birth, and he remains bed ridden in a remote room in the mansion.
When Mary finally discovers him, and complains of the invalid’s imperious manner, he tells her, “I’m selfish because I’m dying.” That’s what he’s been told, as well as if he does live, he will have a humped back like his father.
The dead haunt the place. “They’re not gone, they’re dead,” Archibald explains. Clad in white these spirits appear to comment on the action.
Mary with the help of the maid Martha (Savannah Hernandez) makes herself at home. She longs to have a garden of her own. Her uncle relents reflecting on this desire to garden Mary shares with Lily in “A Bit of Earth.” Her aunt was an avid gardener whose prized rose garden is now locked away. Mary wants in.
And with the help of Martha and her brother Dicken (Will DuPuis), an earthy mystic who converses with birds, she gains entry, and plants the seeds that will flower in a brighter life for them all.
This twisting plot is fueled by a score filled with memorable melodies and lyrics that expose the souls of the characters.
Cousino and Stack have beautiful chemistry as they belt out “Lily’s Eyes,” revealing a mutual love for the same woman.
Young Miss Weese as Mary has the presence to anchor the show. Holding her own in numbers such as “I Heard Someone Crying” where the voices of Mary, Lily, and Archibald as well as the chorus of Dreamers burst into haunting counterpoint.
Hernandez, who played Eponine in the troupe’s recent production of “Les Misérables,” again demonstrates an engaging voice on “If I Had a Fine Horse” and “Hold On.”
Dickon is in a world of his own, removed from the emotional turmoil of the household. DuPuis embodies his high spirited, cheerful, and perceptive nature as expressed in “Winter’s on the Wing.”
The darkness of winter and the shambles that the garden seems to be in is just a passing phase, he tells Mary.
“The Secret Garden” will blossom again as will the human spirit. The PMT’s production is a perfect entertainment for the season.
