The Secret Garden "Misread": The Broadway Musical as Creative Interpretation

"What distinguishes the most important literature is its ability to engender new interpretations," Perry Nodelman has recently suggested (107), citing Frank Kermode's identification of such textual "openness" as a defining characteristic of what we call "classics" (44). By this measure, Frances Hodgson Burnett's Secret Garden (1911) is a "most important" classic. Few if any children's texts are more frequently discussed in papers at scholarly assemblies; few have been more often adapted in other media. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film starring Margaret O'Brien was made in 1949; television films were produced for the British Broadcasting Company in 1975 and the American Columbia Broadcasting Company in 1987; and Warner Brothers released yet another version in 1993. In the last decade there have been at least four musical adaptations. Nona Sheppard and Helen Glavin turned the book into a children's opera, performed in England in 1991, and in that year an opera by Greg Plishka and David Ives was given its world premiere in Pennsylvania. The book has also been twice adapted for the musical theater, in Great Britain in 1983 and in America in 1991. Although the latter adaptation did not receive unalloyed critical praise, it was the musical production nominated for the most awards in the 1990–91 Broadway season. Marsha Norman received a Tony for her musical book, the producer Heidi Landesman won one for her set, and Daisy Eagan won another for her portrayal of Mary Lennox; Grammy-winner Lucy Simon composed the music, and Tony-nominee Susan H. Schulman directed the production. The Secret Garden ran successfully on Broadway from 5 April 1991 to 3 January 1993; beginning on 28 April 1992, a North American road tour was scheduled to run longer than its Broadway version.

Professional obligation more than personal desire drove me to Saint Louis to see the tour production in May 1992. The movie adaptations had seemed aesthetic lightweights compared to Burnett's novel, and I considered my interest in The Secret Garden nearly exhausted by years of teaching it, writing about it, listening to papers and reading articles about it. Happily, only a few short scenes snapped me out of this smugness. Unlike the movie adaptations, whose power was largely borrowed from Burnett's original, the musical had an energy of its own. Set, staging, words, and music offered in different media the textural unity and complexity that had sustained my interest in the novel over the years. I felt the presence of a persuasive and provocative interpretation of the novel—persuasive because the musical was in important ways reading the book as I and other female readers and feminist critics had, provocative because the musical had found new openness in Burnett's text. Reminding myself that the playwright, composer, set designer, and director were all women, I affirmed my intuition that on some issues in some books we can indeed speak of communal female responses. Considering the deletions from and additions to Burnett's text, I recalled Harold Bloom's assertions that poets (and presumably musical theater creators) necessarily "misread" their precursors (or sources) in moving beyond them (14). Recalling reviews suggesting that the musical had distorted or eliminated some essence of Burnett's text (for example, see those by Frank Rich and David Richards), I mentally retorted that different readers find different essences, as I had at different times over the years, that reviewers and critics also misread, if usually less venturesomely, according to Bloom. Finally, comparing my enjoyment of the musical to my earlier pleasure in writing about The Secret Garden and in reading articles that taught me something new about it, I agreed with Bloom that critical essays, like poems—or musicals—are "creative" (43), adding to the text as much as zeroing in on some primary essence. What follows, therefore, is a misreading or "creative interpretation" (Bloom 43) of the musical The Secret Garden, as well as a commentary on the musical as a misreading or creative interpretation of Burnett's novel.¹

Having introduced myself as a misreader, it is appropriate to provide more information about these...