THE SECRET GARDEN

Cindy King and Ellen Seyer found a way to challenge Notre Dame High's most gifted theatrical and musical players by planting the best and brightest in "A Secret Garden."

For the next several weeks King and Seyer plan to watch the fruit their labor grow into a promising cast.

While King handles the stage director's duties and Seyer takes care of the musical direction, James Hindman will conduct the orchestra.

"When I looked at what was here, I knew our students could handle a big challenge," said King. "So we decided to do something unique like The Secret Garden.

"We believe this is a demanding musical, but we also feel that there's enough ability here to pull it off." King indicated Notre Dame is the first high school in the country to obtain the rights to the popular musical, which won a Tony award in 1991.

The play will take place in the Notre Dame Auditorium April 7,8,9 and 10 beginning at 8 p.m.

Said Seyer,"We've got someone who can play a 10-year-old boy and still sing in soprano. When we looked at that unique combination, we knew we had to go for something like this musical."

Jill Johnson will play the part of Colin Craven. "I don't want to cut my hair off to play a boy, so they're going to try and find a wig for me," said Johnson, who will carry first-hand experience when she steps into the role of the sickly character.

"I had my spleen removed in September and spent 10 days in the hospital," said Johnson. "I think that will help me get into the character more. I lost some weight when I was in the hospital, so that should help me look younger and weaker than I really am."

Johnson, a senior at Notre Dame, will play a character who is the same age as Mary Lennox, who is played by Notre Dame freshman Beth Essner. "It's interesting that we've got a senior and freshman both playing characters of the same age and doing a good job at it," said Seyer. "This is a different kind of musical in that the words complement the music instead of the other way around," said Seyer.

Adam Cox, who plays Archibald, must concentrate on a role that runs counter to his everyday personality. "I'm really more outgoing than an introvert, but I have to play someone who has given up on life and hope after his wife has died," said Cox, who plans on continuing with his theater career at Millikin University in Decatur, Ill. "It's a difficult role, but one I find very interesting," said Cox, who hopes to follow in the footsteps of former Notre Dame actor Roger Seyer.

Essner is excited about the demands of her role as Mary. "It's a good role to play because Mary relates to so many of the other characters," said Essner. "Mary is a brat, so I have to try and get into that kind of mood when I'm playing her."

Indeed, when the cast was walking through the lines to the final scene, Essner wondered how she should utter a key passage. "Should I sound like a snit when I say `Oh Mary, Mary, quite contrary?'" said Essner. King indicated that she should.

In "The Secret Garden", 10-year-old Mary Lennox awakens one morning in India to discover that her parents and all of the surrounding compound of English residents have been killed by a cholera epidemic.

Soon she is being taken, without explanation, to her uncle's gloomy mansion in Yorkshire, to be raised by strangers. Her only possession is a cameo picture of her Aunt Lily, who is played by Kelli Hobbs.

In Yorkshire Mary finds her uncle so distracted and depressed by Lily's death, which occurred 10 years earlier, he can barely remember that Mary is now living under his roof.

Spoiled, unruly, and left to wander the gardens and take care of herself, Mary nonetheless befriends a servant girl named Martha, played by Kim Westrich. She also befriends Martha's brother Dickon (Michael Renick) and the estate's head gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, played by Danny Strohmeyer.

None of them tell the truth of the mysterious locked garden behind the estate, nor will any of them shed any light on Mary's persistent claim that every night she hears someone in the house crying pitiably behind some unopened door.

As Mary takes the situation into her own hands, her personality undergoes a transformation. She discovers first the long lost key to the secret garden, and then the door which leads to her equally neglected cousin Colin, who has been bedridden since birth.

With the help of Dickon, Marth and Ben, they untangle the secret of Colin's birth, his mother Lily's death, and together they nurse the long shutaway garden to full bloom once again.

"This is a tremendous educational experience for the students as well as the teachers," said Seyer. "The students come closer together than they would in a classroom setting and they seem to break down the barriers in the process. They really believe in Cindy and, as you can see, they really trust her."

Said King after the cast failed to execute the proper wave, "Don't wave to them as if you were waving to your families. You don't know those people until the curtain comes down. By then they should be in tears, sympathetic with characters they didn't know."

Thus the secret of King's wondrous theatrical garden, scheduled to blossom in early April.