Charming; that’s the word I would use to describe The Secret Garden, an exuberant and colourful family show currently enthralling audiences at York Theatre Royal.
The stage adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s much-loved novel involves music, dance and puppetry as the protagonists are given licence to cavort on a verdant, Edenesque set.
The evergreen story of a young orphan forced to live with her deformed uncle deep in rural Yorkshire after the death of her parents in India is a classic of children’s literature
Even Philip Larkin, that Eeyore of English poetry, was impressed by the book’s warmth and humanity. After reading it as an adult in 1953, he wrote: “If [the novel] has any message, it’s surely that, well, I can’t put it in a sentence, but it’s that life is strong and joyful enough to push up and overturn the strongest and heaviest morbid fancies and fears: it calls on everyone to put aside distrusts and shrinking-back, and live to the utmost while life is for the having.”
The Secret Garden also struck a chord with the late Jack Danby, who survived both Dunkirk and D-Day to become an acclaimed teacher in East Yorkshire. He named his son Colin after one of the characters in the book. Sadly, Colin, a gifted geologist, was killed, aged 21, by a rock-fall in a gold mine at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, in 1961.
Jack was not one to wallow in self-pity. He decided the best way to honour the memory of his son was to encourage other youngsters to make the most of their lives. So he carried on teaching; he also served as a magistrate in Beverley as well as being on the Board of Visitors at Everthorpe Borstal.
Jack sowed many a seed as a teacher and, inspired by The Secret Garden, he helped to nurture many a beautiful bloom.
*The Secret Garden is on at York Theatre Royal until 25/08/2018.
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