The Story of the Musical 'The Secret Garden'

Act One

In 1911 in Bombay, India, there has been a terrible outbreak of cholera. Ten-year-old Mary Lennox has lived there her whole life, as her father works for the British Colonial Service. She is a spoilt and bad-tempered little girl, who is used to being waited on and obeyed by Indian servants. She sees little of her mother, who is more interested in party going.

Mary is quickly put to bed one evening by her father – with the eerie sounds of wailing and chanting, and the glow of fire, off in the distance (Opening Dream).  When she awakes the following morning, she wonders why she has been left alone in her bedroom.  She intones a chant she learned from her Ayah (a native servant) while in India, and a dead black snake magically rises out of a small wicker basket.

She is soon discovered by two British army officers, and told that her Ayah, as well as her mother and father, have died of the cholera.  Mary is sent back to England to reside with her uncle, Archibald Craven, who lives as a recluse in his lonely 100-room house, Misselthwaite Manor, on the Yorkshire moors (There’s a Girl).

After the long sea voyage, Mary is met by her uncle’s housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock.  On the train to Yorkshire, Mrs. Medlock tells Mary that at Misselthwaite Manor she shouldn’t expect to see her uncle.  After the death of his pretty young wife Lily, the sister of Mary’s mother Rose, he has become even sourer than he used to be.  In the coach on the way to the house Mary asks about the howling sound.  Mrs. Medlock tells her it is the sound of the wind “wuthering” through the bushes.

At the Manor, Mary meets Dr. Neville Craven, her uncle’s brother, who tells Mrs. Medlock that Mary is to be taken to her room, and that her uncle does not want to see her.  That night in her room, Mary hears strange sounds and wanders the halls of the large house searching for the source, but has no idea if these are ghosts, or people crying (I Heard Someone Crying).

The next morning, Mary meets the cheery young chambermaid Martha, who hints that the gardens of the house may hold something interesting (A Fine White Horse).  Mary is not convinced, but anything seems better than staying in the old house.

Mary’s bad temper lessens as she spends her days outside in the gardens of the house (It’s a Maze).  Misselthwaite Manor, she realizes, has more to it than she could have guessed.

Mary makes friends with the gruff old head gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, and with Martha’s brother Dickon, a weird and wonderful young man who has a special affinity with wild things – birds, animals and plants.  He talks to them and understands their language. Ben tells her that the garden was her aunt Lily’s and that her uncle Archie locked it and buried the key to it when she died.  He warns her that it is shut to everyone.

She comes across her uncle in the garden, who seems to be lost in a private reverie – perhaps dancing with ghosts (A Girl in the Valley).  They talk briefly, but when she asks about her Aunt Lily’s garden, her uncle quickly takes his leave.  Mary, alone in the garden, sings of her personal dreams (The Girl I Mean to Be).

Dickon, however, encourages her to speak to the robin that keeps chirping at her (Winter’s on the Wing).  The bird in turn shows Mary where the key to the locked garden is buried (Show Me the Key).

Unable to find the door to Lily’s garden, Mary decides she will plant the seeds that Dickon has given her. She asks her uncle for permission to start her own garden (A Bit of Earth).  Her request confuses him. It makes him think of the needs that Mary may have as a child, but it also reminds him of his dead wife and of the flowers that bloom only to die.

That night, while a storm rages outside the house (Storm I), Mary hears again the eerie crying.  She enters the forbidden west wing and discovers her cousin Colin, a sickly, arrogant little boy who is confined to bed and visited by his father only when he is asleep (Round-Shouldered Man).  Colin is sure that he is deformed and that he is going to die.  Mary convinces him that this is rubbish, but as they begin to warm to earth other, they are interrupted by an angry Dr. Craven and Mrs. Medlock.  Mary is banished from Colin’s room.

Feeling abandoned and lost Mary rushes out of the house (Final Storm).  The events of the cholera epidemic in India return to her like a nightmare, but the spirits of her mother Rose, and of Lily her aunt, appear to give her comfort and to lead her finally to the hidden ivy-covered door of the secret garden.

Act Two

As Mary dreams of the garden, Dr. Craven finds Archibald packing to leave for Paris, and tells him Mary is endangering his son’s health. He insists that Mary be sent away to school.

As the brothers quarrel the ghosts of Lily and Rose appear, Rose trying to persuade her sister Lily not to marry the gloomy Archibald (Quartet). It is clear they are re-enacting an argument they had many years before.  As Archibald and his brother squabble, Archibald makes it clear that all he wants is to live in the past with his memories of his dead wife.

Now both brothers realize that Mary’s eyes remind them both of Lily (Lily’s Eyes).  In the song, Neville reveals that he too was in love with the beautiful Lily.

Archibald instructs Neville to find a school for Mary, then goes upstairs to say goodbye to his sleeping son (Race You to the Top of the Morning).

The following day, Mary tells Dickon that she has found the secret garden, but that it is dead.  Dickon shows her that under the soil everything is very much still living (Wick). Together, he reassures her, they can bring the garden back to life.

Disregarding what she had been told, Mary goes to Colin and tells him she has found his mother’s secret garden.  With the help of his mother’s ghost, Colin finds the courage to leave his sick room and to go into the gardens (Come to My Garden).

Mary, Martha, and Dickon all help to push him out in a wheelchair and into the secret garden (Come Spirit, Come Charm).  They begin to restore the garden.  Ben discovers what they are doing and is sworn to secrecy.  Badly wanting to play his part with the others, it is not long before Colin is taking his first steps and standing without their support.

Mary now has urgent reasons for staying at Misselthwaite Manor.  She wants to see the garden bloom again.  She wants to see Colin regain his health.  Neville tells her she must go to a boarding school.  The headmistress has come to interview her, but Mary behaves so badly that the headmistress leaves.  Mary accuses Neville of trying to steal control of the estate from her uncle and, enraged, he tells Mary she must leave the house within the week (Disappear).

Following orders, Martha packs Mary’s clothes in preparation for her departure, but reassures her that things will be better soon (Hold On).  Martha then encourages Mary to write to her uncle Archie begging him to return (Letter Song).

It is at a particularly hopeless moment that Archibald reads the letter.  Life does not seem to him worth living without his dead wife (Where in the World). Again the ghost of Lily appears.  She comforts him (How Could I Ever Know).

Archibald returns to the house to discover Lily’s secret garden is alive with roses and other flowers and that his son is well.  In the final scene he tells Mary that Misselthwaite Manor will now be her home, and that he will treat her as his own child.  Thanking her for what she has done, he gives her the garden for her own.  As the living family comes together, the ghosts leave one by one. Family and servants celebrate this new beginning (Finale).