The Secret Garden, New Forest Players, Performing Arts Centre, Ballard School, New Milton
ACCORDING to Frances Hodgson Burnett's well-loved classic, it is magic that transforms young Colin Craven (Art Gosling) from a sickly, wheelchair-bound future to full health, helped by lonely Mary Lennox (played with mature self-assurance by 14-year-old Laura Cantegreil) and Dickon (Charlie Boyle). However, I suspect it was something rather more that made this such an enchanting and enjoyable production.
Having only a minimalist set, effective though it was, meant that everyone had to work twice as hard to paint the scenes in our minds, and in this they succeeded admirably, never more so than when Mary searches the corridors of Musselthwaite Manor to find the source of the crying she has heard.
The main adults in the production - PJ Stevens (Mr Craven), Emily-Jane Charge (Martha), Michael Collyer (Ben Weatherstaff) and especially the excellent Georgette Ellison (Mrs Medlock) - gave fine characterisations, but it is really the children who make this play come alive.
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