On the turn of the season, a new musical arrives that makes the air feel fresh. The Secret Life of Bees feels like a new kind of crowd-pleaser: joyful and inclusive. Based on Sue Monk Kidd’s 2001 novel, later made into a 2008 film starring Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah, it turns a coming-of-age narrative into more of a quest story: the search for acceptance, a home and a better world, in a landscape blighted by racism and misogyny.
It is 1964, in South Carolina. People fan themselves with the heat; President Johnson has just signed the Civil Rights Act. In Whitney White’s gripping production, a news reporter forebodingly informs us that “local activists vow to test the new provisions”. Motherless white teenager Lily (Eleanor Worthington Cox) ends up on the run from her abusive father, looking for safety with the family’s Black maid Rosaleen (Abiona Omonua), who has been violently beaten while on her way to vote.
