STAGE REVIEW : A Sumptuous Yet Fallow ‘Garden’ : Musical’s Waves of Visual Opulence Supplant a Confusing Story Line

Just in time for the Year of the Woman, politically speaking, comes the Musical of the Women.

“The Secret Garden,” which opens tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, is the creation of powerful women, beginning with Frances Hodgson Burnett, on whose popular 1911 book it is based, and expanding to the majority of the creative and production team: Book and lyrics are by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman (“ ‘night, Mother”), music by Lucy Simon, staging by Susan H. Schulman, costumes by Theoni V. Aldredge, lighting by Tharon Musser and sets by Heidi Landesman, one of the show’s producers.

Sumptuous is the word that comes to mind in describing this three-time Tony-winning show. Landesman’s seemingly limitless inventions assail the senses in waves of visual opulence that regularly supplant Norman’s confusing story line and a musical thread by Simon that delivers not one memorable song.

It’s a classic case of humming enchanted sets.

Landesman’s hallucinatory mix of picture-postcard Victoriana imitates one of those children’s cardboard theaters: layers of filmy gauze on gauze, with large eyes peering at you through framed mirrors or bleeding like pentimento from behind enormous florals and a suspended dollhouse replica of dark Misselthwaite Manor, where most of the action takes place.

Burnett’s story, if you can get to it, is simple enough. Little English Mary Lennox, who grew up in colonial India, is orphaned by cholera and sent to live in Yorkshire with her widowed uncle Archibald. This hunchbacked, taciturn fellow is still mourning the loss of his wife, Lily, who died giving birth to their ailing son Colin. Archibald subconsciously blames the boy for the mother’s death and prowls the world to escape his pain, leaving Colin with servants and his brother Neville, a physician with an unhealthy agenda.

When Mary arrives with her own pain and a nasty temper, she discovers in Colin a companion in frustration. With the help of young chambermaid Martha, Martha’s brother Dickon and the old gardener Ben, Mary unlocks Lily’s secret garden, abandoned since her death. This transparent metaphor for spiritual rebirth constitutes a breakthrough that helps to heal Colin, Archibald and herself.

What is moderately complex as concept becomes muddled by the presence of too many ghosts on stage and their blurred separation from the living. A wildly uneven attempt at some sort of Yorkshire accent by many of the performers only redoubles the hurdles, making it harder than ever to follow events.

Were “Secret Garden” endowed with a hummable score and a clear story line, it might have been a pendant to the “The Phantom of the Opera”: an addictive, lavishly crafted turn-of-the-century fairy tale made irresistible, in this case, for children.

But the absence of enough verbal and visual coherence keeps it at arm’s length even for adults. It remains a quixotic confection, designed to dazzle the senses but undercut by confusing plot and incomplete characters.

For all of the lush orchestrations by William D. Brohn and their lively execution by musical director Constantine Kitsopoulos, Simon’s music is more rich than satisfying, and Norman’s characters are a remote, often dour puritanical bunch.

Director Schulman keeps things swirling, but the movement is indeed more circular than forward, and for lack of propulsion, things pall midway through Act II.

Theoni V. Aldredge has clothed the dead in creamy elegance, and the living in more earthbound hues--the principal difference between them. All are highlighted, as are the seductive sets, by Tharon Musser’s sometimes caressing and sometimes incandescent lights.

In Los Angeles, where “The Secret Garden” played before moving down to OCPAC, Anne Runolfsson’s warm, pervasive presence as Lily was the most unifying element of the show.

Young Melody Kay was a perky Mary and Luke Hogan a combative Colin, but Kevin McGuire’s glum Archibald lacked definition (more in the one-note writing, one suspects, than the performance).

There were entirely too many sketchy stereotypes, such as Douglas Sills’ big-throated villain Neville and Jay Garner’s benign old gardener Ben. Roger Bart and Tracey Ann Moore were an energetic brother and sister as Dickon and Martha, but the latter’s version of Yorkshire speech was impenetrable.

And so it went, with minuses besetting pluses at virtually every turn.

A great deal of money and talent have been showered on this “Secret Garden,” but they have not produced all the expected results. What fails to flower through the visual splendor is a beating heart.