'Tuck Everlasting': Tale of immortality

Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Sarah Charles Lewis and the cast of TUCK EVERLASTING on Broadway. Photo by Joan Marcus

‘TUCK EVERLASTING’: Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Sarah Charles Lewis & the cast. Photo: Joan Marcus

TUCK EVERLASTING
Book by Claudia Shear & Tim Federle
Music by Chris Miller
Lyrics by Nathan Tysen
Based on the novel by Natalie Babitt
Directed & choreographed by Casey Nicholaw
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th Street, (212-239-6200)
http://www.tuckeverlastingmusical.com/

By David NouNou

Tuck Everlasting is a well-intentioned musical but ultimately presents nothing new. To say that it shares a similar arc to Peter Pan is an understatement. Peter Pan visits a young Wendy but throughout the show he never grows up. Jesse Tuck (Andrew Keenan-Bolger) meets an 11-year-old Winnie Foster (Sarah Charles Lewis) but he never ages. Both are fairy tales and both have boys waiting for the girl to grow older so they can be together. But as we all know fairy tales–although end up having a happy ending–do not always end the way we would like them to end.

Tuck Everlasting was a novel by Natalie Babbitt published in 1975. It chronicles Winnie Foster being forced to stay home by her mother because the mourning period for her father’s death has been less than a year. Winnie wants to go to the fair that has arrived in town. Belligerently leaving her mother and Nana, she stumbles into the woods and comes across Jesse Tuck who says he’s 17 but in reality is 102. There is a reason for that. Many years ago, he and his family drank from the water trickling from a tree in Winnie’s back woods in New Hampshire and he ultimately tells her about their lives. She is kidnapped by the family; Angus Tuck, the father (Michael Park) Jesse’s older brother, Miles (Robert Lenzi) and their mother, Mae (the always delightful Carolee Carmello). The dilemma is now that Winnie knows the truth about the Tucks, what to do with her? So the story meanders into family tsuris that drinking from this fountain of youth and being able to live forever isn’t really a cure-all, but in reality a curse watching all their friends and loved ones die and having to keep running and hiding so people don’t get suspicious they are not aging. Jesse further instructs Winnie to wait six years for him until she is 17 before she can drink from the well and then they can be together.

Casey Nicholaw, acting as both director/choreographer, has a daunting task on how to keep this top spinning without it falling on its side. After all, he has done both chores for the outrageous Book of Mormon, the glorious Aladdin, and my favorite musical of the 2014/15 season Something Rotten!, there is no way of topping any of them so we are left in that gray zone of sitting through another musical that has an interesting book but is saddled with too many non-descript songs.

Fine acting and singing is done by all, especially Carolee Carmello, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Michael Park, and Robert Lenzi. Also noteworthy are Fred Applegate as Constable Joe, in search of Winnie when she is suspected to be lost; and Terence Mann as the man in the yellow suit, the carnival barker. All are talented indeed, but unfortunately the material doesn’t challenge them to be more interesting, so they end up being too one-dimensional. One must mention the lady of the evening, Sarah Charles Lewis as Winnie, for she makes a formidably self-assured Broadway debut.

Tuck Everlasting presents to each audience member the dilemma of would you drink from the fountain of youth and live forever or would you rather live your life to the fullest the way nature intended and enjoy whatever it presents you, with the possibility of a happy life: falling in love, getting married, having your own children, losing your parents and the cycle keeps revolving as life is meant to be lived? Your choice.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published May 1, 2016
Reviewed at press performance on April 30, 2016