“a gorgeous, polished, haunting, intelligent and deeply dramatic piece of music theatre, spectacular in scale, beautifully performed, and powerfully directed”
****The Scotsman

“Some shows offer adults a portal back into childhood. The Secret Garden is one of them.” ****The Herald

“This is a Christmas masterpiece… From its sensational music and songs to its five star acting and set that transports you expertly. This is both for adults and children in equal measure” ***** TV Bomb

“stunning scenery, superb acting, beautiful movement and fabulous singing” ****EdinburghGuide.com

“The Secret Garden musical is fairly faithful to the book and, with this focus, has real depth: the audience too can experience joy, growth and connection” ****Edinburgh Spotlight

“An imaginative set and some truly superb vocals”
****The List

“this imaginative production delivers with style” The Stage

“a production that is rich in character, style and emotion” OnstageScotland.co.uk

“excellent live music, and a beautiful finale the stage is set for a seasonal five star winner” Lothian Life

We hope you can make it down to the Festival Theatre soon to see what all the fuss is about.

There is the old adage that ‘the show must go on’ but on this occasion Scotland’s severe weather has beaten us. Obviously we are concerned to let every member of tonight’s audience know of the decision and we are hitting the phones all morning to spread the word and to help ticket-holders book into alternative performances. Although the team is a little downhearted by the situation we are in, there is a tremendous Dunkirk spirit evident. Our focus is now on getting tomorrow (Friday’s) opening night preview perfect.

If you have any queries about exchanging tickets for tonight’s performance please contact our Box Office staff on 0131 529 6000 and they will be happy to help you in any way they can.

A key ingredient of the set is a massive revolving stage which up until 1am this morning didn’t revolve! With an engineer present there was much scratching of heads (and the possibility that the designer of the mechanism might have to fly over from Los Angeles!) until finally someone thought to check one of the smallest components of the machine and it now spins like a dream – Phew. You can’t be of a nervous disposition to work in the theatre!

The Secret Garden set model See more set pics here

Chris is here in today’s rehearsal checking that every note is in the correct place. Michael Haslan the Musical Director is stopping to check that every band member is happy with the parts they are playing. The percussionist has a particularly tough task with so many percussion instruments to swap between. It is an exciting if slightly tense stage in the rehearsal process as the snow continues to fall outside. Sophie Kavanagh, one of our Mary Lennox actors, is stuck in snow with her Mum somewhere between here and Aberlour…

The next step is the start of the technical rehearsal this afternoon. With several props and some costumes also stuck in snow it is a race to get everything ready for Thursday!

Watch the orcehestral rehearsal of ‘Come to My Garden’

Watch the ‘Indian Dance’ orchestral rehearsal

Watch a little bit of the sitzprobe

This kind of Behind-the-Scenes activity is usually hidden from public view at the specially designed loading area at the back of the theatre. However, with the side streets still deep under snow there was no way of getting the lorry and the equipment safely around the back.

But snow or no snow The Secret Garden musical will go on! So with a lot of seasonal goodwill – and hard labour – from our Stage Team, an alternative route was dug and laid from the front of the theatre around the side to Stage Door.

Well done everyone!

The Secret Garden get-in operation

He was supposed to fly from Copenhagen to Edinburgh early yesterday  morning but flights were cancelled. So instead he flew to London’s city Airport in order to get a train up. Then, because of London tube strikes, we arranged a cab to take him to Euston to book onto the sleeper to Edinburgh. The cab crawled across London at a snail’s pace and dropped him at Euston just late enough that they refused to sell him a ticket because they had closed reservations for the sleeper at 6pm! Caspar defiantly refused to give up despite our advice to check into a hotel for the night, and sat in Euston for nearly 4 hours finally managing to locate a guard who sold him a ticket for the sleeper to Glasgow. Exhausted, he took the sleeper to Glasgow, then an early morning train to Edinburgh to start rehearsals first thing this morning.

So despite a 20 hour journey he will not miss a single moment of rehearsals… Now that’s dedication for you!

The cast are reading through the script and singing the songs for the first time together. The atmosphere in the room is electric as we hear the full beauty of Lucy Simon’s music. Marsha Norman’s script is such a wonderful telling of the story. What a great bunch of actors we have. They have seen the set model for the first time too – great excitement!

The principal company looking at the storyboard for the show

Francis O'Connor (Designer)

It’s painstaking work – like most musicals this show is very complicated technically – but hopefully soon we’ll have a set of about twenty or thirty photographs that show us some sort of sequence. It’s looking good so far… Here’s hoping it all works when the pieces get bigger!

Gene Goodman

These roles are as taxing as any adult role, the script asks a lot of the children and (quite rightly) makes no concession to the fact that it’s a young person playing the part, so it’s taken a huge amount of effort to find the performers to play them. I’m thrilled with all of them, we’re very lucky to have found such talented children, and I can’t wait to start work. Thank you to casting director David Grindrod, and Bryan Lewis of Mary Erskine school.