Theatre in Review: Tuck Everlasting (Broadhurst Theatre)

	Andrew Keenan-Bolger (center). Photo: Joan Marcus

In shows like The Drowsy Chaperone, The Book of Mormon, Aladdin, and Something Rotten!, Casey Nicholaw has a made a fair bid at being his generation's Gower Champion, staging big, breezy production numbers with sly undertones of satirical wit. His supreme skill as an entertainer is a crucial factor on the above shows' lengthy runs. In Tuck Everlasting, however, he has gone all Agnes DeMille on us, closing out this modest and sometimes touching show with a full-on ballet of the sort that DeMille once routinely provided for the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe. It covers several decades, showing one generation succeeding another -- and, at first, you may be taken aback, as I was, by its resolutely old-fashioned nature. But it sneaks up on you, and its cycle of birth, growth, marriage, parenthood, and, ultimately, death, is, in the end, extraordinarily moving. Once again, this singular artist takes a gamble that pays big dividends.

It's also true that the rest of Tuck Everlasting never comes close to the level of emotional engagement offered by the finale. Based on Natalie Babbitt's beloved novel for young adults, the musical tells a simple unadorned story aimed squarely at a family audience. Made of simple, homespun materials, it wants to draw you in by posing questions about mortality and the meaning life; at the same time, it doesn't want to probe its central situation too deeply, for fear of scaring the young ones with its underlying sense of tragedy. Whether a quiet, thoughtful, almost placid musical can survive on blockbuster-happy Broadway is something only time will tell.

Time, of course, is on the minds of everyone in Tuck Everlasting. The book, by Claudia Shear and Tim Federle, focuses on Winnie Foster, an 11-year-old girl living in New Hampshire in the late 19th century. Winnie's father died recently and she feels trapped in a state of permanent mourning with her mother and grandmother. Thwarted in her desire to attend a carnival that comes to town, she slips out of the house, running into Jesse Tuck, who claims to be 17. They quickly bond -- he introduces her to tree-climbing -- and he brings her home to meet the rest of his family: mother Mae, father Angus, and brother Miles. Before you can you say "dark family secret," the truth is out: Long, long before, the Tucks innocently discovered a well, located deep in the forest near Winnie's house, that confers immortality on those who drink from it. Unaware of its magic properties, they each had a glass, and now are frozen in time. Jesse may look like he is 17, but is long past the century mark.

This is the first of several points where the book of Tuck Everlasting wobbles badly. Would the Tucks give away their secret so quickly, especially to a young girl on whose reaction they cannot count? Also, how is it that nobody but the Tucks has ever found this well? Why isn't half of New Hampshire running around, looking awfully spry for 175? It also transpires that the carnival's sinister owner is in hot pursuit of the well; he appears to have the ability to guess things -- like a person's true age -- by staring into his or her eyes, but both his knowledge and apparently magic powers are left vague. For this reason, plot devices meant to evoke a sense of wonder often come across as easy shortcuts for the writers. The rest of Tuck Everlasting follows the Tucks' attempts at avoiding the creepy, unnamed carnival man, as well as Jesse's proposition to Winnie: that she wait until she is 17 to drink from the well, and join him in an endless future of roaming the world.

Tuck Everlasting has its charming moments, including a solid opening number, "Live Like This," which introduces the characters; "Good Girl Winnie Foster," which establishes Winnie's frustration at living in a house of sorrow; and "Top of the World," in which Winnie and Jesse climb an enormous tree -- one of many lovely touches in Walt Spangler's set design. Nicholaw also provides a rousing bit of choreographed roughhousing during a scene at the carnival. At the same time, Tuck Everlasting is a show that pleases rather than thrills; the rueful, folk-inflected music by Chris Miller and plain, often prosaic, lyrics by Nathan Tysen move the story along without providing real excitement or adding to its emotional heft. Most of all, the show doesn't want to think too much about what a living hell immortality might be, leaving one subject to constant boredom and irritation and unable to sustain relationships; the Tucks, who get together once a decade so people won't ask questions about them, are presented, a few conflicts aside, as a pretty solid family unit.

Tuck Everlasting is also filled with talented people who are made to play second fiddle to the story of Winnie and Jesse. (The preternaturally mature-looking Sarah Charles Lewis, as Winnie, and the Jesse of Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who, at 31, easily passes for 16, made a distinctively odd couple.) Carolee Carmello and Michael Park are left to stand around, looking worried and saying the obvious, as Mae and Angus. Robert Lenzi fares a bit better as Miles, because he has a big secret, and a song ("Time") in which to tell it. If I say that Terrence Mann hams it up shamelessly as the villain from the carnival, I'm not necessarily criticizing; the role is what it is, and he does well by "Everything's Golden," a louche, Randy Newman-ish number in which he dreams of selling the magic water to anyone who can pay. Fred Applegate and Michael Wartella have not-really-necessary comic-relief roles as the local constable and his geeky, junior-detective nephew, who take on the task of searching for Winnie. Valerie Wright and Pippa Pearthree have little to do as, respectively, Winnie's grief-stricken mother and wisecracking grandmother; the scene in which the mother signs over control of the family's lands to Mann, in exchange for the promise of retrieving Winnie, is confusingly written and lacking in impact.

Spangler's beautiful set design is dominated by the enormous tree made of ribbons of wood, with branches and clumps of leaves that extend into the house; other locations, including the severely gabled house occupied by Winnie's family and the Tucks' whimsical forest domicile, complete with a kind of tree house/attic, are imaginatively rendered, as is the brightly colored carnival sequence. Once again, Kenneth Posner, the master of seamlessly beautiful lighting, endows each stage picture with a stunning clarity. Gregg Barnes' costumes range from black mourning dresses to the Tucks' leather-based pioneer look and Mann's bizarre all-yellow getup. (Josh Marquette's hair designs contrast carefully maintained period coiffures for Winnie's mother and grandmother with Mae's wild, all-natural tangle of curls.) Brian Ronan's sound design is admirably intelligible and includes such effects as frog croaks and a really impressive (and unexpected) gunshot.

It's interesting, and admirable, to see Nicholaw stretching himself in this way, and there's no question that the final dance sequence, and its brief aftermath, brings Tuck Everlasting to a much stronger close than one expects. Still, whether the show remains strong enough for Broadway remains to be seen. If I had a child, I'd rather take him or her to Tuck Everlasting than the bloated, mendacious Finding Neverland or the too-clever-by-half Matilda. If immortality is surely out of its reach, might it have a nice, healthy life? -- David Barbour