Most of you have probably read Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting, a pre-teen novel (before they were overrun with pouting vampires) that gently reveals mortality, its pains and its pleasures. In the novel, heroine Whitney must decide whether or not to join the Tuck clan, which is stuck in perpetual life after haphazardly drinking from the fountain of youth. This was my favorite book for several years in the time leading up to high school because it was one of the first times I had been presented with the ultimate question – given the opportunity to live forever, would you accept? At first it seemed like a no-brainer, but the characters and trials of Tuck Everlasting forever impacted the way I understood life and death.
Several years ago a teen flick based on Babbitt’s work came to theaters and left a lot to be desired. Somehow they managed to flatten the drama and stress the nuances, but now Stage One is giving the story a shot. Stage One, a Louisville children’s theater, presents Tuck Everlasting at the Kentucky Center on Friday, February 18.
Tuck Everlasting is like Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and The Little Prince in that the works, on the surface at least, may have been written for children, but their deep messages illustrated with fantastical prose enlightens adults of all ages. Stage One’s presentation of this work should be interesting because children will be battling and embracing difficult concepts of mortality, and you get to watch.
For more information, you can visit the event's page on the Kentucky Center site.
Image: courtesy Kentucky Center
