“The Secret Garden” comes to life Thursday to Saturday at Main Street Studios in downtown Fredonia. Pictured are cast members.

As part of the season theme of plays and musicals based on classic literature, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s story “The Secret Garden” comes to life Thursday to Saturday at Main Street Studios in downtown Fredonia.

Since June 2023, the Main Street Studios Community Theatre Project has been bringing high quality productions to Fredonia and the surrounding region with casts comprised of local singers and actors. The group is excited to share this rarely produced musical with theatre lovers in western New York.

With a score by Lucy Simon and book by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman, this Tony Award winning musical will leave you rejoicing in approaching spring!

The story of The Secret Garden centers around a family in late 1800s England. Young Mary Lennox (Lilly Shaw) has lost her parents to cholera in India and has been sent to live with her brooding Uncle Archibald (Mike Lee). There, watched over by her Aunt Lily’s ghost (Janie Villella-Sharon) and those of her parents Albert (Riley Wilson) and Rose (Caitlyn Clary), Mary discovers the secrets of the manor including the existence of her cousin Colin (Blake Haase), and Lily’s abandoned garden.

Mary is helped along the way by her serving girl Martha (Emma Newton), her nature loving brother Dickon (Aidan Burrell), the cranky gardener Ben Weatherstaff (Steve Wendell), and challenged by Archibald’s domineering brother, Neville (Gavin Card). Mary embarks on a journey of emotional healing that changes the lives of everyone around her as the garden slowly moves from deep winter to vibrant spring. What better time and place to present this beautiful show than mid-March as we come out of one of the coldest winters in a venue that began life as a flower-seed company.

Community members are welcome to attend with tickets available at mainstreetstudios.seatyourself.biz and at the door. The theatre is located in the former Card Seed Factory Warehouse, at 50 W. Main St., Fredonia.