The Secret Garden, Dorchester Corn Exchange and touring

ANGEL Exit's new version of The Secret Garden, which opened last week at Dorchester Corn Exchange at the start of a major UK tour, is a magical, engrossing and beautifully judged show that really is suitable for all ages.

Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic children's story, first published in 1911, it tells the story of the orphaned Mary Lennox, sent "home" from India after her neglectful parents died in a cholera outbreak, and marooned in a gloomy house on the Yorkshire moors while her uncle Archibald Craven wanders the world grieving for his late wife.

The company takes up the story from the voyage to England, and at Dorchester the youth theatre, where Angel Exit founder Tamsin Fessey discovered acting, cleverly provided the introduction, weaving the spell of the hot, colourful and rhythmical India where Mary started her life.

Ashleigh Cheadle, the young actress who plays the central role of Mary, graduated from Central in 2010, and was immediately spotted by Complicite's Simon McBurney and cast in his Globe play, as well as landing the role of Miranda in the Coram Fields production of The Tempest.

She manages the difficult task of making the bad-tempered and haughty Mary a vulnerable and appealing child, taking on the different speech patterns of India, Britain and then Yorkshire with a perfect ear.

Tamsin Fessey, who trained at Lecoq in Paris, wrote and directed The Secret Garden, showing that she and her company richly deserve the funding they have won for this show, which will become part of the Dorset Olympic shenanigans.

Angel Exit first toured widely in the region with Moonfleet, and once again The Secret Garden uses physical theatre inspired by the European theatrical traditions of buffoonery, clowning, melodrama and chorus to tell its story.

Here there is also puppetry with Mary's robin and Dickon's fox as convincing members of the company.

Simon Carroll Jones, who also plays the frosty Mrs Medlock captures the tetchy terror of the hypochondriac Colin, Lynn Forbes, Angel Exit's co-founder, co writer of The Secret Garden, also plays Martha the kindly maid and voices the robin, to which Mary attributes human emotions.

Completing the cast are Max Mackintosh as Dickon, Martha's 12-year-old brother, and Henry Douthwiate as the gardener and the uncle.

All (except Ashleigh) take multiple roles in this fascinating telling of a familiar story, bringing out all the magical therapeutic effects of the garden as the cold winter turns to thrusting spring and lush summer.

This is a wonderful piece of theatre, performed in a Corn Exchange littered with leaves and overgrowth, adding to the atmosphere and the whole experience. If the sound system blew a fuse, no-one minded the slight delay, eagerly awaiting the next segment of the riveting story.

Do go and see The Secret Garden as it tours the country, making several stops in our region, the next of which are at the Marine at Lyme Regis tonight, Friday, and tomorrow.

Visit the website, www.angelexit.co.uk/productions/, for full details. GP-W

PS. Someone undoubtedly "designed" the "programme" – three A3 sheets printed front and back and folded up. You can't read them in the auditorium, as they are too big and not attached to each other, and you need to keep turning them round to find out what you might want to know. It's the one mistake of the entire production.