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‘The Secret Garden'

• On stage: Driftwood Players present this musical adaptation of the classic Frances Hodgson Burnett children's novel, at the Wade James Theatre, 950 Main St., Edmonds. • Performances: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 4. • Tickets: $23 general, $20 seniors & juniors, available by calling 425-774-9600 or www.driftwoodplayers.com.

CONTACT THE ENTERPRISE Jocelyn Robinson, News editor jrobinson@heraldnet.com

Driftwood reveals ‘Secret Garden'

Spellbinding cast brings this enchanting musical to life

By Dale Burrows
For The Enterprise

A little English girl growing up in India, kisses her parents goodnight, then wakes up the next morning to find them dead of cholera. Kids are resilient. People bounce back.

Or so we hope.

Well, guess what?

They can.

The marvel of this symphony of a musical is the utterly charming way it can pull together the limitless power of hope to heal. It doesn't always. Here, it does.

Credit a brilliant Ireland Woods and Frank Kohel: Woods, as the devastated little English girl abruptly uprooted from all she has ever known to her uncle's country estate in early twentieth-century England; and Kohel, as the deeply troubled uncle tortured by memories of his dead wife.

Woods blends an impossibly bratty kid's kid with a sensitive and amazingly open-minded intelligence. The result is fully developed profile in courage. Woods makes getting her character out of the woods a serious, funny, optimistic experience.

Too many have made too much too often of the uncle's self pity. Kohel wallows some but not enough to drag you down with him. However flickering, his hope's flame is clearly, always struggling to catch fire. Kohel makes it hard not to pull for him with him.

Anthony Dreessen's druidic nature boy makes for an absorbing experience in magical wonder.

The child invalid with backbone comes to life with Riley Dawes. Hypochondriacs, beware. Dawes rocks your world.

Derek Hanson's fear-based, conspiratorial uncle's brother is a villainous role realized but not without the slightest touch of humanity. You don't like him. You understand him.

This is a standout singing cast of twenty under the elegant direction of Jay D. Irwin. Countless, imaginative scenic designs by Joanne Branch come and go fluidly, without in any way interrupting the production's forward movement.

Together, everyone involved has here made a “Secret Garden” in which the living and the dead, present and past and tragedy and triumph, all interact, interweave and connect. Hindi chants and ghostly chorales insinuate a shadowy mysticism. Tender love songs uncover delicate sensibilities. Gothic hints conjure up dark thoughts. A kind of bright sanity lays them to rest.

Credit Driftwood at the Wade James. This is an ambitious production, not often fulfilled. Marsha Norman's Book and Lyrics based on Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel and Lucy Simon's Music, promise an uncompromising world in which anything is possible. Driftwood delivers.



Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at entfeatures@heraldnet.com or grayghost7@comcast.net.