Tuck Everlasting
6 / 10
Natalie Babbitt's best-selling 1975 young-adult novel has been filmed twice, and now it returns as an earnest, somewhat attenuated musical. But if Andrew Keenan-Bolger and child actor Sarah Charles Lewis pull off their parts and still retain wide-eyed likability, that's a testament to something enduring...the show addresses deep topics: the nature of time, memory and the circle of life...Chris Miller's Celtic-flavored music and Nathan Tysen's searching lyrics deliver emotionally, if elsewhere they seem merely upbeat and serviceable. The larger problem lies in Claudia Shear and Tim Federle's lumpy book, which takes too long to establish tone and stakes in the first act...Director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw does his best with a prettily designed production.
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