The Secret Garden (Open Air Theatre, London)
Verdict: New Enchantment
Kyoto (Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon)
Verdict: greenhouse gases
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved children’s story is the subject of a bold yet charming cross-pollination project in Regent’s Park. And where the glorious backdrop of the park itself sets the bar high, director Anna Himali Howard’s multicultural transformation does not disappoint.
The story of spoiled Mary, who was orphaned in India and sent to the fictional Edwardian home of Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire, remains largely intact.
Now, however, Mary is mixed race (she has an Indian mother) and the secret garden she discovers in her new home is designed along South Asian lines by her (late) Indian aunt.
But Mary’s pet project, helping her sickly cousin Colin walk, is here amended to help him accept his disability by embracing “the magic of life.”
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved children’s story The Secret Garden is the subject of a bold but charming cross-pollination project at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, writes PATRICK MARMION
The funniest thing is that this show is grafted on Yorkshire dialect lessons, with reassuringly solid acting.
The story is largely intact, with a few updates, such as Mary’s pet project to help Colin walk, here revised to help him accept his disability by embracing “the magic of life.”
Leslie Travers’ delightfully inventive staging sets the tone as the flora of the walled garden is represented with brightly coloured streamers pulled from the soil of raised beds, while concertina-shaped paper garlands are spread out to represent the flowers.
The funniest thing is that this show is combined with Yorkshire dialect lessons, as Mary is stunned by idioms such as Yorkshire “mooers” (heather-covered uplands, not cows).
The acting is also reassuring and solid, with young actress Hannah Khalique-Brown playing a fierce ten-year-old Mary who is actually quite contradictory.
Delighted by the discovery of skipping rerps, she retains much of her defiant spirit as she becomes more independent.
Theo Angel as Colin is also pleasantly superior, but the crowd favorite is Richard Clews as the former gardener who is a tottering treasure of horticultural legend.
The Disneyfied ending of learning to love yourself may require a shot of Pepto-Bismol for some (me).
But before that, the smoky Indian flute, the sound of the sitar and the pounding of tabla drums, along with cleverly improvised incarnations of crows, robins and squirrels, bring new charm to a classic tale.
After nearly three hours of greenhouse gas emissions from the RSC’s history of the 1997 climate change conference, I still wasn’t sure what Kyoto was trying to say.
Is this about reprimanding world leaders for failing to agree on effective measures? Is it about celebrating the fact that 160 countries have reached an agreement on something, despite the oil lobby’s attempts to prevent it?
Leslie Travers’ delightfully inventive staging sets the tone as the flora of the walled garden is represented by brightly colored streamers drawn from poles from the ground of raised beds, with concertina-shaped paper garlands for the flowers.
The smoky Indian flute, the sound of the sitar and the pounding of tabla drums, along with cleverly improvised incarnations of crows, robins and squirrels, bring new charm to a classic tale.
Whatever the answer, it is a hugely ambitious work, directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Crown) with Justin Martin (Prima Facie); and written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson (the couple behind the West End immigration drama The Jungle).
The result is a disconcerting dive into diplomatic doublethink, culminating in armies of delegates arguing over commas, colons, and parentheses in pursuit of impenetrable treaties.
Interestingly, their story is narrated and hosted by the mischievous American lawyer Don Pearlman, who tried to thwart any emissions deal on behalf of the oil industry.
Yet in Stephen Kunken (the office idiot on the TV show Billions), Daldry has cast a vaguely sympathetic climate fiend. He even upstages Jorge Bosch as Raúl Estrada-Oyuela, the Argentine president who was the real hero, pushing through the deal after 48 hours of deadlock.
However, it is John Prescott (Ferdy Roberts) who steals the show, boasting of his experience in multilateral negotiations as a ship’s steward in the merchant navy.
