Variety: Move over, Matilda and Annie, there’s a new gal in town. A fountain-of-youth fable based on the ’70s children’s classic, “Tuck Everlasting” centers on adventuresome 11-year-old Winnie Foster (Sarah Charles Lewis), who comes across a family in the woods that have stayed the same age since they drank from a magical spring nearly a century ago. Tapping into live-forever fantasies of theater’s two core audiences (young people and baby boomers), this handsomely produced tuner, premiering at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater, shows commercial potential; it’s rich in warmth and spunk, but needs a dash more vinegar to cut through the waters of sentimentality if it wants that evergreen life, too.
1 comment:
I think the author's focus on the unsatisfying ending is unfair. One of the most appealing and significant things about Tuck Everlasting is how dissatisfying the end is. There is no good way to resolve Winnie and Jesse's story while doing justice to the arc of Winnie's troubles with her family. It is one of the things that made Tuck Everlasting such a poignant, surprising read to my third grade self - it was simply my first introduction to an imperfect ending. The story reads like an average fairytale, until the very end when the whole thing is turned on its head.
I am, however, glad this production did not shy away from mediums often overlooked in modern theatre. The choice to use vaudeville and ballet are interesting, and seem particularly apt and well-suited to the story. Tuck Everlasting as a musical really plucks at my inherent distaste for musicals, but it seems the production really strives to remain loyal to the book, and the elements that made it such an fascinating and challenging read.
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