Depending on who you ask, Evan Hansen, the neurotic heart of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s 2015 smash-hit musical Dear Evan Hansen, is either a manipulative megalomaniac or a stumbling spokesperson for mental health with the edgy appeal of an anti-hero.
Following nine years as the go-to for theatre kids looking for an easy Halloween costume – chuck on a blue-striped polo and an arm cast – the divisive teen arrives at Melbourne’s Arts Centre in a beautiful production of an imperfect show. A stellar cast backed by creative technical design lands every tear-jerking ballad and pop-rock anthem with a skill sure to both thrill long-time fans and convert newcomers.
But the elephant in the room is Evan (Beau Woodbridge), or rather it’s the show’s tonal problem that he represents. It’s a macabre story. Evan is that brand of socially anxious and self-deprecating anyone who grew up on Tumblr will immediately recognise. On the first day of his senior year he has an affirming letter he wrote to himself at the direction of his therapist stolen by resident high school loner with an incel vibe, Connor Murphy (Harry Targett). When Connor takes his own life soon after, the letter is found in his pocket, leading his family to believe that Evan was his friend. Cornered by the grief-stricken Murphys and craving connection, Evan leans into the lie.
It's all very morally dubious, and the show works best when it leans into the darker, more cynical themes raised by Evan’s deceit. ‘Sincerely, Me’, a show highlight, has Connor return from the dead to parrot emails written by Evan and Jared Kleinman (the bitingly hilarious Jacob Rozario) as they pretend to be him. It’s Black Mirror with a splash of gallows humour, a deeply haunting con scored to a bouncing beat and peppy choreography by Shannon Burns; as well as dynamic lighting design (a mix of eye-catching neon and simple spotlights) from Matt Scott. It's through this emotional disconnect that the show puts forward one of its more interesting points, and through this stagecraft that director Dean Bryant tries to emphasise that point.
Just as Evan is swept up in the spectacle of his lie and forgets its dodgy ethics, so too are we swept up in the bouncing guitar riffs and major chords enough to forgive him. Like Evan and the online audience that makes him famous, we want to believe his platitudes. But this desire for solidarity and community can be weaponised by our own self-interest (and that of others), and the show feels divided between wanting to highlight this critical perspective and sacrificing it for the sake of emotional payoff.
Still, Woodbridge’s Evan is outstanding as he navigates this complex moral terrain. His Evan’s self-doubt hides a genuinely charming person just beneath the surface. It’s a subtle and important distinction needed to ensure that we understand Evan’s mental ill health less as an endearing personality quirk and more as an obstacle to genuine connection he is desperately seeking to resolve.
As a vocalist, Woodbridge cannot be faulted. He rises to the high demands of one of our hardest tenor roles with a bell-pure falsetto, heady mix and a surprisingly rich lower register that boasts clear technical prowess.
However, you’d be forgiven if you found Evan’s particular brand of victimhood, despite Woodbridge’s performance, a tougher pill to swallow than the show implies it is. As he wheels out his victim complex once again – either to avoid accountability altogether or to get closer to Zoe – you feel Pasek and Paul working hard delivering their lyrical platitudes and swelling harmonies to make sure he remains empathetic.
How might we help a teenage boy like Evan, or, for that matter, Connor? They’re two sides of the same coin: disenfranchised men struggling to connect to the world around them. Seeing this type of teenage boy on stage felt topical when the show first appeared, but in 2024, when violent actions from bigoted men seem constantly qualified by references to ‘an epidemic of male loneliness’, it sticks in the throat. This ever-gorgeous score (orchestrated beautifully by music director Zara Stanton) that insists we understand them feels like a tall ask you wish was handled more critically.
The more interesting question the show raises is how we might help those who are asked to care for these ‘complicated’ men. Georgia Laga’aia tears the roof off the Arts Centre with her rich vocal performance of ‘Requiem’, navigating the tension of grieving someone who was cruel and often violent. As her mother, Natalie O’Donnell brings a heart-wrenching fragility to a character burdened by the need to see this cruelty and violence redeemed. And as Evan’s mother, Verity Hunt-Ballard delivers one of the show’s tear-jerking highlights with ‘So Big / So Small’, a quiet anthem to unconditional love that is deeply moving not only for its display of maternal devotion but for the self-sacrifice that such devotion demands.
Dear Evan Hansen is a time capsule for a particular moment in our awareness of mental ill health and its far-reaching effects, and this production executes it beautifully. At its best, the show reminds us that there is no perfect way to suffer from mental illness, nor is perfection the aim when it comes to caring for someone with it. Evan sits on a bench surrounded by beautiful orchards in the end, trying his utmost to strike one last note of hope that ultimately offers a simple answer to complex questions. It’s hard not to feel a bit manipulated, and harder still not to need a tissue.
Tickets for the Melbourne season of Dear Evan Hansen are now on sale over here.
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