Anything will grow anywhere with some minding, a gardener tells the freshly orphaned girl who finds herself uprooted in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s classic.
This adaptation by Holly Robinson and Anna Himali Howard reimagines it as a drama about dual heritage and cultural displacement. It is set in a time of rising political unrest in the Indian Raj with partition as a backdrop to the story of Mary Lennox (Hannah Khalique-Brown), the contrarian 10-year-old who is now the daughter of an Indian mother and English father, both of whom die in the cholera epidemic.
So she finds herself in the cold new climate of Yorkshire, in Misselthwaite Manor, where she discovers a secret garden that brings beauty and magic into her bereft world.
Directed by Himali Howard, it is an inspired transposition of a story that deals with dark themes around family and belonging, with both children and adults trying to fend off loneliness and find their place in the world.
Every character is also a narrator and this collective authorial voice is infused with knowing wit – Yorkshire argot is variously rendered in Indian or RP accents – and wry asides.
Leslie Travers’ set design is made of boxes to gesture at migration and uprooting. There are flower beds on wheels, paper flora and the verdant surroundings of Regent’s Park are imaginatively drawn in as Misselthwaite’s secret garden.
It is all charmingly executed with shades of Emma Rice’s overt theatricality, although it feels self-consciously poised for a while, the slow pacing and woodenness of the first act giving way to more magic in the second, and Jai Morjaria’s delightful lighting design adding to the effects.
The puppetry is instantly enchanting though, with a simple homely appeal. Housekeeper Mrs Matlock (Amanda Hadingue, a highlight) turns a black shawl into a crow. A fur stole becomes the squirrel friend to free spirit, Dickon (Brydie Service), and the garden’s other-worldly Robin manifests as a human palm with a red Indian tikka (played by Sharan Phull, who sings geets exquisitely).
Childhood disability for Colin (Theo Angel) is presented without the miracle cure of the book’s ending and class difference is touched on through characters such as the maid (played with a twinkly eyed verve by Molly Hewitt-Richards) and Dickon.
Sometimes the life lessons are spelled out so that it ultimately seems more a story for children than a crossover show. There are strained moments of joy too but the ingenuity of its ideas win you over, even if you are not quite cast under its spell.
At Regent’s Park Open Air theatre, London, until 20 July
