The Financial Times, September 6, 1991, by Alastair Macaulay
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Chichester is a place I always rejoice to revisit, but 
seldom does its theatre offer a play that develops the ideas 
the place lodges in my head: the historical past and the 
present, conservation and progress, an idyllic locale and 
man's work on nature. This new play, however, draws these 
threads together. Louise Page has, in fact, written a modern 
rural ghost story, with an optimistic ending and this 
accurate subtitle: "An evocative love affair between the 
past and the present." A highly awkward type of play, I 
hardly need to remark.

Doubts, however, are soon allayed by the sensitive 
intelligence of Page's writing. Annie, a young woman with a 
young son, has, after a nervous breakdown, abandoned a 
lucrative advertising career. Now, working for her 
entrepreneur brother Luke, she reconstructs the garden made 
two centuries ago by the explorer-botanist Richard Stephens. 
Gardening is her therapy; but, when Luke buys the original 
journal Stephens kept when building the garden, Annie enters 
so fully into Stephens's garden and world that she starts to 
see him; even to converse with him.

This doesn't surprise us greatly, because he, his wife and 
patron have already appeared to us in several scenes. And we 
see how for Stephens then, as for Annie now, the garden 
sublimates personal desires and frustrations.

Annie's interest in Stephens goes beyond archivism. She 
understands his ardour to invest in the future; she is, in 
fact, the very woman of the future for whom he made the 
garden. And from this she finally learns to invest in her 
own life. It is not hard to find fault here. Some of the 
dialectic about "the past" and "the future," at once too 
artful and too heavy, keeps verging on corniness. The 
relationship between Annie and Luke is not at first clear 
enough; in their first two scenes you could, I think, take 
him for her (unfeeling) husband. The unhappiness that 
afflicts Annie is left far too vague.

Still, the play's virtues easily carry the day. Here are 
some of its more remarkable  feats. We always see both how 
the characters see themselves and how they look to others; 
in particular, we can be caught up in Annie's visions and 
yet still see how crazy she might appear to others. We can 
interpret (as in "Turn of the Screw") the scenes between 
Stephens and Annie as real phenomena or as the intense 
projections of her neurosis.

The writing of the late 18th-century scenes is remarkably 
natural, with only a few anachronisms. At present it works 
mainly like a good radio play. This is largely because the 
black backdrop of Paul Farnsworth's designs (otherwise 
admirably economical) fails to conjure up any sense of 
outdoor place.

The cast is a fine one. Sharon Maughan (she of the Gold 
Blend couple) is an attractive Annie, though too 
temperamentally normal; a dash more neurosis and 
individuality would heighten matters considerably. As 
Stephens, Simon Dormandy is outstanding, with just the 
nervous intensity and commanding personality I mean. Some of 
the best writing goes to the secondary figures - Stephens's 
unhappy wife, Annie's difficult little son, and the gardener 
Mr. Hodgkiss - roles played with finesse by Petra Markham. 
Alex Scott and Geoffrey Freshwater. Caroline Sharman 
directs, and must be largely responsible for the naturalness 
with which  this tricky stage endeavour succeeds.

I found "Adam was a Gardener" utterly absorbing. Its central 
dilemma - largeness of spirit versus personal anguish - 
strikes home with delicacy and with force.



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