Gemma @ 'Tuck Everlasting' - Life is the Greatest Wonder
What’s it about?
Tuck Everlasting the Musical is about the Tuck’s, a family who cannot die, and their encounter with a little girl named Winnie Foster. Jesse Tuck is 17, and he’s been 17 for almost 100 years. Winnie is 11. The two meet and form a friendship, but Jesse has plans for their future. He asks Winnie to join him in immortality when she turns 17, so they can live out a lifetime of adventures together. What does Winnie decide?
My experience:
I have been a fan of Tuck Everlasting, the book, since grade school. And when the 2002 movie with Alexis Bledel came out, I fell more in love with the story and I developed a huge crush on Jonathan Jackson, the actor playing Jesse.
Below are the major differences between the novel and the film:
Novel
When Jesse meets Winnie, she is 10 years old, going on 11
Jesse and Winnie have nothing more than a platonic relationship, and they only know each other for a few days before Jesse invites Winnie to make herself immortal when she turns 17
Film
When Jesse meets Winnie, she is 15
Jesse and Winnie, both teenagers in body, have a romantic relationship, and they spend months with each other before Jesse asks Winnie to make herself immortal as soon as she feels it is safe
Knowing these differences, I am curious to see what direction the musical will take.
The show opens with the Tuck family, Angus, Mae, Miles, Jesse, and their cat, taking a drink from a spring in the woods, surrounded by dancers illustrating the passage of time. The Tucks have no way of knowing that this water will make them live forever, but 87 years go by and the Tucks (plus cat) have not visibly aged a day. Their horse, however, who never drinks from the spring, passes away of old age, leaving behind his family.
Enter Winnie Foster, bored out of her mind and longing for excitement. Her mother, still distraught over the passing of her husband (Winnie’s father) the year before, allows little amusement in her household, reminding her daughter that they are still a family in mourning. Winnie wants nothing more than to go to the fair, which is only in town once a year, but her mother has forbidden such frivolity. While Winnie has a reputation for being a good girl, she has grown restless, and is aching to “raise a little more than heaven.”
Winnie decides to run away from home, and for the first time in her life, takes off exploring in the woods her family owns. She then stumbles upon Jesse, who has stopped by his spring for a drink. She admits to Jesse that she is lost, and Jesse offers to escort her back home. Winnie accepts this offer, but first decides to take a drink from the same spring that she had seen Jesse drinking from. Jesse (of course) stops her, telling her little girls who drink from that spring turn into toads, gesturing to a nearby toad. Winnie is not fooled one bit, for she knows this toad. In fact, this toad is her only friend. Winnie explains to Jesse that she’s never had a chance to see much of anything in her short life and Jesse, astonished, decides to give her a taste of the beauty that’s all around them. He teaches Winnie how to climb a tree, to Winnie’s delight.
I get a touch of the heebie-jeebies at 11-year-old Winnie playing with a grown man alone in the woods. Sure, he’s 17 years old physically speaking, but he’s lived for 104 years. And even if he were only 17, I’d still find it creepy that a 17-year-old would choose a pre-pubescent girl for a friend. I am so unnerved by this that during intermission I google the actors playing Winnie and Jesse to find out that the actress playing Winnie is actually 11 years old while the actor playing Jesse is 30.
Jesse tries to introduce Winnie to his mother, Mae, father, Angus, and older brother, Miles, as his friend, but once they realize that she knows the location of the spring and that the Tucks have some kind of secret, Miles flings Winnie over his shoulder, kicking and screaming, and the family reluctantly plan to keep Winnie at their cottage against her will until they feel that they can earn her trust.
The Tucks tell Winnie their story, the story of how they are the way they are, of the spring and its remarkable properties. If Winnie is at all skeptical, Jesse accidentally shooting his father in the chest convinces her of the Tucks’ truthfulness as Angus rises from the floor without so much as a scratch on him after being shot at point blank range by his son.
Mae takes Winnie under her wing, taking her upstairs to get changed for bed. Winnie dresses in little boy’s clothes, which we eventually find out once belonged to Miles’ son. As Winnie is falling asleep, Jesse (in probably the most disturbing moment in the musical) sneaks up to where she is sleeping, and offers to take her on an adventure, more specifically, to the fair. Winnie jumps at the opportunity and the two have a magical time at the fair. Afterwards, Jesse brings up the possibility of Winnie drinking the water from the spring when she turns 17. Winnie is so thrilled, she tells Jesse she wants to drink the water immediately. Jesse assures her that she should wait until she is older. Innocently, Winnie asks, “What’s the difference?” to which Jesse replies,emphatically, “There’s a difference.” He tells Winnie that in 6 years she can drink the water and they can be married, and see all the wonders of the world. Winnie is undecided, but she can see the good in both drinking the water and not drinking the water.
The next day, Angus takes Winnie on a ride in a rowboat, and he warns her about the dangers of immortality, of outliving everyone you love, of constantly having to run away so as not to attract attention. It’s an eternity of being stuck, and it defies nature. I have often wondered whether or not I would drink the water if I were in Winnie’s situation. Immortality has its appeal, but I believe there is something to be said for a once in a lifetime experience, and never dying kind of ruins that. The knowledge that my time is limited makes the time that I do have more valuable. If all I had was time, what would it all mean? Could I really choose to stay 17 years old for the opportunity to be timeless with one man?
Winnie ponders whether or not she should drink the water from the spring:
When Winnie gets home, before she enters her house, she confidently kneels down to feed the water from the spring that Jesse has given her in a vile to her toad.
The rest of Winnie’s story is told almost entirely in dance. We see 11-year-old Winnie twirling around her house, and once she disappears from view a grown Winnie reemerges. The circle of her life plays out on stage, without a word spoken. Winnie lives long enough to meet a man, fall in love, marry, outlive her grandmother and mother, have a son, raise her son, watch her son meet a woman, fall in love, marry, and have a son of his own. Winnie ultimately outlives her husband, and at the end of her life, she is revisited by all of her loved ones and her younger selves, and when she ultimately passes away as a very old woman, she has lived a very full life.
The Tucks visit Winnie’s gravestone and realize that Winnie has lived the life they had always wanted to live, because life is meant to be lived, truly lived, and one cannot live without death.
Previously published on the HuffPost contributors’ network on 06/19/2016 11:21 pm ET
