So, as in Cold Comfort Farm, and many other parables, girl power sorts out a classically tangled family mess of guilt, shame and secrecy. But Mary could not do it without the help of her new friends and the Secret Garden itself. This is the special place locked away by her despairing autocrat uncle, Lord Craven (Jack Humphrey), who may have been a patient of Sigmund Freud’s. The Garden is especially rich in allegory.

The pace is rather slow at first. The cast jiggle awkwardly to indicate train and coach travel. The over-used aside to the audience: ‘It looked like X was about to say something else…’ is meant to convey mystery and suspense but is merely annoying on the second hearing, let alone the tenth.

But the pace picks up once Mary finds the Garden as, fittingly, a low-flying helicopter passes overhead and Misselthwaite Manor is transformed as the exemplary cast get going. Hannah Khalique-Brown is a determinedly bitter 10 year old who keeps Mary’s anger well stoked until it has to die away. Theo Angel’s Colin achieves a similar feat transforming from the agonised boy-baby whose only inheritance is a death wish, but who is saved by a very special gift. Brydie Service’s Peter Pan-alike Dickon is more than believable, as are Molly Hewitt-Richards’s empathic rope-skipping maid Martha, and Richard Clews’ near-mystic gardener, Ben Weatherstaff. Amanda Hadingue’s housekeeper Mrs Medlock also transitions away from her Mrs Danvers persona.