Secret Garden good enough to overcome distractions

The following review was written by Michael Moore of the Kitsap Sun.

BREMERTON — This feedback is going to be partly about the feedback.

I think the Mountaineers Players have a fair-to-middlin’ production of “The Secret Garden” going on up at the Kitsap Forest Theater. At the July 28 performance I attended, though, there were more than the usual distractions that kept the charming story of the power of love from being as effective as it might’ve been under Craig Schieber’s warm yet efficient direction.

The show has plenty going for it, starting with impressive vocal performances by several of its leads, sterling accompaniment by keyboardist Greg Smith (the lone musician in music director Julia Thornton’s charge) and visual contributions from Barbara Klingberg (who designed both the splendid costumes and the minimal yet evocative set) to overcome those “usual” distractions — an atmosphere that is part stage play and part family picnic, with the ambient noise from young children and restless adults, the wind in the branches and the roar of airplanes from the nearby Bremerton Airport.

Throw in a sound system that was scratchier’n a new wool sweater, though, and things get a little dicier, as they did for the opening weekend’s Sunday matinee. Speakers buzzed and burped, microphones cut in and out ... With as modest a crowd as braved Sunday afternoon’s cool (which really wasn’t bad at all), they might’ve been better off ditching the mics and asking everyone just to slide on down to the front.

Once there, they would’ve found much to entertain and move them. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved story, effectively adapted by librettist Marsha Norman and composer Lucy Simon, is treacle — but it’s well-done treacle that provides a number of opportunities for really good singers to show off.

Two Kitsap residents are among those who take the most advantage. Sara Henley-Hicks, making her first appearance at KFT, gives full, but just short of operatic, voice to ghostly Lily, while Eric Emans is also tremendous as conflicted Neville.

But Emans has to take a back seat for man of the match to the lovely tenor of Stephen Leigh Jones, who plays Neville’s even-more-conflicted brother, Archibald, who’s still grieving the loss of his wife by cutting himself off from anyone who reminds him of her.

Into the brothers’ unhappy home lands Mary Lennox, whose parents have been claimed by a cholera outbreak in their Indian outpost. Archibald is Mary’s uncle, but sees too much of his beloved Lily in the little girl’s face upon her arrival and soon exiles himself to his flat in Paris.

As Mary, 9-year-old Jasmine Harrick is whip-smart and feisty from the get-go, but gradually warms to the task of bringing love back to gloom-ridden, haunted Misselthwaite Manor. The youngest cast member is a fine singer and holds her own in the acting department, too. She also has extensive movement on her plate, part of the atmospheric choreography by Guy Caridi.

Mary’s posse at Misselthwaite includes chambermaid Martha and her brother, Dickon (Britt Boyd and Tristan Carruthers), Ben the gardner (Carl Olson) and Colin (Cymbeline Brody), who’s bedridden under Neville’s overprotective care. Both Olson and Brody are Kitsap products, and both add strong acting performances.

It all turns out well in the end, as you knew it would. But the joy in “The Secret Garden” is in the telling.

If you can hear it, you’ll like it.