The Secret Garden Revival? — Page 2

Well I don't know of any plot changes that helped it be closer to the book. The Broadway production is in truth barely any different from the book anyways. It makes Lily a character displayed on stage and adds the ghosts, but they have little to do with the actual plot. The main difference in the stage production from the book is the addition of Neville Craven. He does not appear in the book and naturally neither does the mutual obsession with Lily.

To answer an earlier post, two changes were made for the national tour that were also worked into the Broadway production once Mandy Patinkin left. To my knowledge these are the only changes but I haven't studied it or anything. The ending of "I Heard Someone is Crying" is changed. You hear on the CD that at one point the chorus has ended, Lily goes into her "OOs" that also start the song and then we hear a chorus sung by a few ghosts into a quiet diminutive ending. In the revision, at the end of the chorus before the ghost's chorus the music modulates, everyone sings and the ghosts come in behind to end with a loud and impressive "I Am Lost". It was seen as giving the audience a clear applause spot since without it there was not one until after "If I Had a Fine White Horse". Also, "It's a Maze" is heard on the CD as a song for Ben the gardener with some others coming in for very brief moments. The national tour revised it to be more of a montage between Ben, Mary, Dickon and Martha. It is, in my opinion, kind of awkward. That may, however, be because I listened to the CD for years before hearing the revised versions. I like both endings to "I Heard Someone Crying". I'm not sure which, if either, I prefer.

Thanks for the correction. I've read that book several times and I didn't ever remember him being in it! He must be very minor.

Regardless, his character in the musical was the major difference in the stage version. He is not so much the antagonist as he is in the musical, and the the Lily crush is not discussed.

Other than that, I'd say the stage version follows rather closely, with perhaps the notable exclusion of the character of Martha's mother. Most adaptations of the story delete that part of the story anyways. It's not necessary.

Sondhead, I find the musical quite different from the book. The book was mostly focused on Mary and Colin's transformations from spoiled, sickly brats into healthy children; Archibald Craven was a minor character. The musical, though it pays Mary and Colin their due, shifts the main theme of the story onto dealing with grief and the loss of loved ones: the addition of the ghosts and of Lily as a character, the expansion of Archie's subplot, the Archie/Lily/Neville love triangle, all these point to a very different focus from the book's.

Granted, these themes were present in the book, but they didn't dominate the plot as much as they do in the musical. What Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon were saying about grief through this musical wasn't there in the book--which doesn't mean the book wasn't a great framework for those ideas, just that the book and the musical don't have 100% the same point and focus.

(Incidentally, when I first became familiar with the musical, I thought the creators had invented the name Lily as a cheesy-if-appropriate moniker for Archie's dead wife. It wasn't until I reread the book a few months ago that I realized Archie cries out his wife's name--"Lilias!"--at the end of his dream.)

"I can't see how the London production could have shifted the focus enough to be more like the book. The Archie / Lily focus was definitely still there."

It would have gutted the show to take that out, anyway. The musical is using certain themes from the book to express a fairly different point; why take away the point just for the sake of making the show a mindless rehashing of the book?

(Ho boy, now there are probably a few people here who know me from the Les Mis fandom and who are wondering what closet I have the real Marianne locked away in.)

On "that site" that we can't name by name, they have an "E!" television special about the national tour and you never see two of the people from that production who went on to have major careers. Douglas Sills, who played Neville, and Audra McDonald, who played the Ayia.

You hear her once on the special. She doing the wordless vocal that gets sung behind the scene where Mary and Colin meet for the first time.

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