Brighton Year-Round 2025

The Secret Garden/Bleak Expectations

Brighton Little Theatre

Genre: Adaptation, Children's Theatre, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Farce, Live Music, Puppetry, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: Brighton Little Theatre

Festival: Brighton Year-Round

Low Down

Review

Brighton Little Theatre’s exciting Youth programming returns with another double bill. One enchanting work for children, and for adolescents a sassy parody of Dickens: Clare Lewis directs Elizabeth Newman’s acclaimed 2023 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 evergreen The Secret Garden, and Mark Evans Bleak Expectations, staged from the BBC Radio 4 series. Co-directed by Evie McGuire and Laurits Hiroshi Bjerrum, their team smash it.

Steven Adams’ set, numinous with the soft pastels of Beverley Grover’s lighting (tending to the magical and fantastic respectively) involves a gallimaufry of witty props. Liz Woodhouse’s compositions and musical direction delight in two wholly contrasting sound-worlds. There’s dedicated costume and sound design, and a huge support crew (listed at the end of the review). And fine projection artwork from Mandy-Jane Jackson as well as Ed Berridge’s puppets.

The Secret Garden

Clare Lewis distils the kind of directing we’ve seen with Shakespeare in Love, to a production of rapt wonder; with Assistant Director Philip Bremner, and Nikki Dunsford’s choreography, which dances and pattern through this hour-long adaptation. Costumes by Glenys Stuart, and Lulu Belle Harrington quote the dual animal/child roles many take on, with a riff on Edwardian-stye clothing. Richard Lindfield’s sound melds bird-calls with Woodhouse’s delicate music.

Mary (respectively Georgie Goldsmith, Lyla Moodie on this occasion, and Alice Cracknell) is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire after both her parents die of cholera. At first vehement n her hatred of the place, she soon warms to it, and with the help of Robin (Emma Henderson, also wittily doubling housekeeper Mrs Lennox) and Mr Medlcok (Sherman Landrum).

Mary discovers the eponymous, fabled and locked Secret Garden. On the way she befriends ailing cousin Colin (Toby Kendon Harding, affecting in his recovery). Rather harsh with him at times, she badgers and cajoles and sometimes tenderly persuades Colin back to health. She meets Martha (Rose Lewis), Ben (Hal Offen), and helped by gardener Dickon (Samyo Bryson); and visited and cajoled in her turn by Mrs Craven Anna Tkachenko, also Rabbit) and Sadie Newman’s Mr Craven. Erin McNeil’s Lamb and a Lieutenant, Evie Blyth as Fox and Captain. There’s also Issy Begley’s Crow and Adesh, Frida Lewis’s Mouse and Anne, Jackson Marshall’s Deer and Basil.

These are assured, pointed, sometimes magical performances. Dunsford’s choreography is winningly executed and indeed winning describes the whole production. It was difficult to pick out individual performances from the 16. Moodie inhabited the sheer irritation of Mary (and doubtless Goldsmith and Cracknell, in the ensemble, are just as strong), actors playing adult and animal roles revelled in the change (particularly Henderson, Landrum, Bryson, Tkachenko and Newman as just Mr Craven). The children’s roles – Kendon Harding, Lewis and Offen are taken with aplomb and a natural sense of not ‘playing’ children.

Bleak Expectations

The second part brings two hours with an interval of Victorian cross-century, cross-dressing mayhem that originally premiered on Radio 4 in 2007. Adapted by Evans into a novel in 2012 and here, a drama first seen at the Watermill in 2022, it compacts the five series (2007-12) and TV from 2011. It’s a dog-whistle-stop tour of dashed hopes and dastardly derring-do-dos.

Co-directed by Evie McGuire and Laurits Hiroshi Bjerrum Bleak Expectations riffs on most of Dickens’ works, particularly Pip of Great Expectations, Bleak House, and David Copperfield. But there’s an Oliver Twist moment, lots of Nicholas Nickleby, a scene from The Old Curiosity Shop, a ghost of A Christmas Carol, a dash of Martin Chuzzlewit, hard cheese from Hard Times, a tincture of Little Dorrit, the opening of A Tale of Two Cities and a reanimation out of Our Mutual Friend. If anyone can spot The Pickwick Papers, Barnaby Rudge, Dombey and Son, or The Mystery of Edwin Drood, you’re way more Dickensian than me!

Philip “Pip” Bin, inventor of the …bin, looks back on his life as author and inventor. Clara Ptevi Naylor and Mabel Landrum alternate this role with the smaller one of Lily, and manage an astonishing twinship, replete with raffishly millionaire attire. It’s something the original run managed, with a comedian starring each week in the role. They’re matched by the two younger Pips, Nate Hancock (gaming the gamesome) and Melody Melville (a sighing lover and proto-plutocrat) who enjoy uproarious reverses of fortune and, as with everyone, a style of quotable gesture and self-referential jokes; as hands stick out signposts from the wings.

McGuire and Hiroshi Bjerrum have co-ordinated a  blissfully riotous cast, where fight director Tony Bright is let loose to orchestrate impressive scenes. Sheer slapstick though must be credited to the co-directors and cast. It’s a beautifully-drilled chaos, a production of sublime silliness. There’s every nod and wink to Victorian hypocrisy, mild sexual jokes with some easy bullseyes. And in multiple deaths of an evil family, Kind Hearts and Coronets.

As Pip’s mother, eventually ‘mad’ Agnes Bin, Everlyn Newnham riffles through a virtuosic gallimaufry of identities. There’s overly idealistic accident-and-penguin-prone father Thomas (Ray Grimley-Taylor), with whom after three children Agnes can only hold hands; as he exits on imperialist exploitation.

Medically-minded careerist Pippa (Oliva Francis, 100 years ahead of her time) lasts much longer. Pippa, dragging her father’s gift of an anvil about with her (it has a use) eventually has a thing for Pip’s best friend Harry Biscuit (Daniel Seligson who relishes Harry’s impulse to hug men and women alike). Son of the inventor of the biscuit, poor Harry’s a prince of hopeless ideas to prove he’s his father’s son: it involves swans and cake and Seligson takes the biscuit.

Finally sad Poppy (Delilah Edinburgh who feels as cold as an iceberg; with ambitions for a hearth and a vicar). The plunge from prosperity to misery to rich ownership is sketched with cartoonish Boz-like energy.

Pip’s hounded and Pippa abducted by Dastardly guardian (after Thomas ventures an iceberg too far) Gently Benevolent. Gently’s relished by Arlo Giles-Buabasah: the crack of his cloak is blood-red silk; metaphorically. He overmatches radiantly kind but ineffectual Skinflint Parsimonious – Ben Costello later plays Flora Dies-Early, with obvious brevity.

Pip’s schooldays at St Bastard’s are peppered with horrible histories – “Please sir, can I have some less”  – names and a determination to have him killed at 18, along with every other boy in the school coming of age (18, here). Enter the outrageous Hardthrasher family, Headmaster Wackwell (Thomas Gutteridge, ebulliently bullying), frustrated Miss Chastity (Elisabeth Peirce); and later Reverend Praygood (slithery-souled Emilia Sykes) and deliciously corrupted Judge Solomon (Cody Powell in hang ’em high mode). And Rupert Ginzler’s fugitive Bakewell Havertwitch. Who turns out far more resourceful than anyone imagined, as a French boulanger, jailer and very interesting to Agnes when she stops thinking she’s a cat and pastry-seller.

Finally enter Reverend Broadley Fecund (smoother-than-thou Archie Gorman) and his daughter wearing a box because of hideous childhood injury. Ripely (Sofia Begley, who revels in sighs, looks and smiles-through-tears letters) who’s revealed, foiling a look-after-me-plot by her father, to be beautiful. Pip though madly pushes her into the sister zone till almost too late and a wife later (she’s already 28!). Considering Ripely’s desire for Pip, writhing with frustration, he’s as callous as her father. But she’ll probably forgive him if she can bear him off.

Barbara Campbell and Christine Fox excel in their parodic edge to costumes, notably Sir Pip but elsewhere too, pointing up Benevolent and others. The dastards are Dracula-silky.

David Thomas’ sound eggs on the parody bite-quoting famous chunks of high/late Romantic composers. Ravel, Sibelius’ Finlandia to a portentous theme, Verdi’s Requiem (at a Bleak moment), Prokofiev (inevitably R&J) and others.

Deliciously wholesome satire, this is a deliriously-paced, superbly-acted production. Several here will go on with luck to the acting careers so undernourished in schools. Outstanding youth theatre.

Set Construction and Painting Steven Adams, Tom Williams, Allison Williams, Leigh Ward.

Stage Manager Paul Charlton, DSM Mike Skinner, Properties Janet White, Puppet Design/Maker Ed Berridge.

Lighting Designer and Lighting and Sound Operation Beverley Grover, Sound Design Richard Lindfield (The Secret Garden) David Thomas (Bleak Expectations)

Make-Up Hair and/Wigs Patti Griffiths, rosa Alempour, Fight Director Tony Bright,

Projection Artwork Mandy-Jane Jackson

Lighting and Sound Operation Glenys Harries-Rees, Costumes Barbara Campbell, Christine Fox, Photography Miles Davies

Special Thanks to Gladrags, Vic McGuire, Kirsty Harbron, Duncan Henderson

Published March 31, 2025 by Simon Jenner