Plays and Players, November 1991, by Ariane Koek.
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Gardening seems the unlikeliest subject for a new play. For 
one thing, the dramatic potential would seem at first glance 
to be confined to the snipping and pruning of the bushes. 
For another, reconstructing a garden in a theatre, let alone 
the small space of Chichester's Minerva Studio, would seem 
laughable. Yet on both counts, Louise Page's latest work 
overturns all expectations. Despite odds, there are shears, 
bonfire burnings and hedge-trimming, as well as passion, 
drama and a lot of fuel for thought.

Taking its cue from the great English landscape gardens of 
the 18th century, Page's play is an examination of "the 
past's relationship with the present." Moving backwards and 
forwards in time, the play charts the growing relationship 
between stockbroker-turned-gardener Annie Daviot (Sharon 
Maughan) and Richard Stephens (Simon Dormandy) who gardened 
the estate she is working on in the 18th century.

As Annie starts to reconstruct Richard's garden, she is put 
in touch with the eighteenth-century maverick, who created 
it when forced to stay on land rather than go to sea. And as 
past and present interweave, Annie becomes as much part of 
Richard's vision of his garden as he of hers - so much so 
that Annie in the present gives Richard a cutting to 
propagate in his garden for the future.

This dramatic temporal device could seem mawkish, but it is 
handled with great sensitivity by Page, director Caroline 
Sharman and the cast. Events in Richard's life happen often 
at the back of the stage - when these scenes end, the action 
flows directly to the front and to the characters in the 
present. While an eighteenth-century scene is happening 
downstage, Annie and her gardener Hodgkiss (Geoffrey 
Freshwater with a lusty Joe Grundy accent) cut and trim the 
lawns and hedges upstage. The coexistence of past, present 
and future is thus cleverly reinforced. 

There is no doubt that designer Paul Farnsworth's clever yet 
deceptively simple set also enables this easy translation 
between past and present; an oblong raised lawn, set with 
hedges at each corner, statues at the back of the stage with 
a model of a house beyond. A sheet drawn across the lawn 
transforms it into a lake iced over. Blue lightning 
transforms it into a lake on which Annie, her brother Luke 
(Alexis Denisof) and her son Edward (Alex Scott) appear to 
row.

But as so often with Farnsworth's designs, he adds an extra 
detail which topples his clarity of thought into obscurity 
or excess. Two statues which are covered with dust cloths at 
either side of the stage at the beginning of the play, are 
revealed as Adam and Eve when Richard and Annie start 
getting acquainted and the garden approaches restoration to 
its eighteenth-century splendour - a heavy-handed detail.

Unfortunately too, Page's play is too full of concepts which 
have not been fully worked out. In the opening scene, Annie 
confronts Luke with the idea that he is a man existing on 
past glories, as exemplified by his ordering her to recreate 
Richard Stephens' garden. She wants to create a new garden 
for her new life outside London's stockbroker belt. Yet 
inexplicably in the next scene Annie says she wishes to 
conserve the past by recreating the old garden - a change of 
heart which doesn't ring true and is never explained. 
Similarly, the characters often speak in sentences which are 
stilted and forced - too much the writer's thoughts, 
distilled neither into the play nor in the character's 
words.

But it is hardly surprising that "Adam Was a Gardener" 
should be riddled with flaws, since the number of themes 
almost overloads it. From gardening and violence (to 
contruct a garden - as at least two characters point out - 
nature or a former garden must be vandalised), to the drive 
to control nature (as shown by Annie's attempts to walk on 
the lake when she has finished the garden), and the theme of 
self-discovery, the play bulges with all the intellectual 
resonances gardening could possibly have.

But despite these reservations "Adam Was a Gardener" is a 
fascinating and at times thought-provoking play. The acting 
is excellent, from Sharon Maughan's slightly fey Annie, 
recovering from a nervous breakdown, striking just the right 
note of vulnerability yet wilfulness, right down to some of 
the lesser parts such as Alex Scott's portrayal of Edward, 
who is at once too wise for his years but will suddenly 
revert to fits of childish petulance. Only Petra Markham's 
Mary - Richard's wife, suffering from the shock of 
miscarriages and Richard's subsequent rape - lack nuance and 
subtlety. But her part is the least subtle in the play - 
one-dimensional and almost cliched in its equation of women 
with unruly nature.

There is no doubt that Louise Page's play could have 
benefitted from another draft. But for all that it is one of 
the most daringly original and interesting new plays this 
year. And at last, in the final production of the current 
Minerva season, the space is being used for the very reason 
it was built - to showcase new writing.



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