[Content note: this review discusses themes of suicide and mental health issues. If you need support, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or find more options at healthdirect.gov.au.]
I suspect anyone reading this is either a huge fan of Dear Evan Hansen, or you’re not. The middle ground is sparsely populated. If you’re part of the former cohort, it’s because the show is beloved in musical theatre circles and revered by critics. It’s a new classic in the canon, and we don’t get those too often. Premiering on Broadway in 2016, it was an instant hit, and at the 71st Tony Awards it handily scooped up six out of nine nominations, including Best Musical, Best Book for Steven Levenson, Best Score for Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Best Actor for Ben Platt, and Best Featured Actress for Rachel Bay Jones. It’s now making its Australian debut at the Roslyn Packer Theatre ahead of a national tour, and its reputation ensures an audience is built in – expect tickets to go fast.
If you’re part of the latter, that’s probably down to the widely derided 2021 screen adaptation, which saw Platt, at the age of 27, reprise the title role, a move that drew scathing criticism – largely because he very much did not look like a teenager, especially alongside his age-appropriate co-stars. The film tanked, and the play closed shortly thereafter (in fairness, the pandemic didn’t help).
Perfectly cast, perfectly mounted, perfectly polished...and surprisingly complex in its themes
I was in the latter group. Film is my main beat, and the stink coming off the screen version kept it off my to-watch list. Full disclosure, I was also kind of parachuted in at the last minute for this review, for unpredictable and funny reasons we don’t need to go into here. Sometimes you just jump on the assignment – you’ve got a free evening and off you go. No prep, no research, no due diligence – okay, Evan Hansen, give me what you got.
I’m glad I did. God, it’s so good. Perfectly cast, perfectly mounted, perfectly polished – at the thin end of the quality gradient you start to run out of superlatives. It’s everything you want from a high-end musical, polished and poppy, moving and heartfelt, and surprisingly complex in its themes and the emotional landscape it explores.
Beau Woodbridge makes his mainstage debut as Evan, an anxiety-addled high schooler with few friends, a prickly but loving relationship with his nurse mum, Heidi (Verity Hunt-Ballard), an absent dad, a crush on classmate, Zoe Murphy (Georgia Laga’aia), and a cast on his arm that comes into play later.
Recommended: Find out more about the Australian cast of Dear Evan Hansen.
Advised by his shrink to write encouraging letters to himself (hence the title), he has a tense run-in with school burnout Connor (Harry Targett), who signs Evan’s cast, and ends up with the letter in his pocket. Soon after, Connor dies by suicide. His grieving parents, Cynthia (Natalie O’Donnell) and Larry (Martin Crewes), discover the note in Connor’s pocket and quickly latch onto Evan, assuming he and their late son were friends, and Evan finds himself propagating the lie with the witting help of his default best friend, the arrogant but insecure Justin (Jacob Rozario) and the unwitting help of overachieving classmate Alana (Carmel Rodrigues), who views the whole thing as a kind of extra credit school project. Evan finds comfort and acceptance with Murphys, a nuclear family far richer than his own, and grows closer to Zoe (yep, Evan’s crush is Connor’s sister). His lies, it seems, are doing a lot of good for all and sundry. But it can’t last, of course.
A lot of the action takes place in social media, conceptualised by David Bergman’s video designs projected onto transparent scrims, while Jeremy Allen’s stage is sparse but flexible, a few moving daises enough to take us from location to location. But the pains of adolescence haven’t changed much, even if the technology has. The inclusion of modern technology makes the play contemporary, but the themes are universal – loneliness, social anxiety, and alienation coupled with a yearning for “normality” – whatever that is. Any veteran of the social Darwinian nightmare that is high school will find something to connect with here.
The cast is superb. It’s a star-making turn from Beau Woodbridge, whose Evan is awkward and lovable even as he makes questionable choices that will inevitably lead to heartbreak. Georgia Laga’aia is particularly impressive, bringing complexity to a character who could have been just a cipher; a romantic goal for Evan rather than a fully realised person. Her conflicted emotions about her brother are palpable, and it’s sometimes hard to believe this is her main stage debut, too. Jacob Rozario’s cocksure Jared and Carmel Rodrigues’ chipper, lonely Alana bring much needed humour, but still have interiority. Harry Targett does impressive work as Connor – and do pay attention to the difference between the real Connor we see in the play’s early scenes, and the imaginary version who turns up later – he’s making incredibly sharp choices.
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The characters are all archetypal to one degree or another, including the adults – the harried single mother, the trad dad whose assumptions about life have failed him, and so on. But under Dean Bryant’s (Fun Home) direction we get a concrete and often moving sense of their inner life. We’re all playing roles, aren’t we? We all hew to a type (and I’ll note that Isabel Hudson’s incredible costumes work to reinforce that idea on the stage) but we also want our true selves to be seen. This production lets us see. It’s easy to imagine a version of Dear Evan Hansen that reduces archetypes to stereotypes, but this one takes pains not to go down that path, and it makes all the difference.
There’s not much left to be said about the songs, is there? Banger after banger from Pasek and Paul, a cavalcade of perfectly polished pop tunes. Counterintuitively, I was reminded of The Cure, which is odd considering there’s almost no audible comparison to be made. But what Robert Smith and company do best is craft poppy, catchy numbers that explore dark and complex themes, and that is what Pasek and Paul do here. Yes, the soaring choruses resonate, but it’s the way the lyrics open up the characters that really put it over the top.
It feels like I’m gushing about this production. That’s always a risk, I guess. But I’ll say this – as I was walking away from the theatre after seeing this show, I was thinking about what I’d just seen, of course. But I was also thinking about people I’d known in high school, some of whom are now lost, some of whom didn’t make it past high school. I was also thinking of myself over thirty years ago, when I was the anxious son of a single mother who worked as a nurse, and wondering what that kid might have made of the show.
So, Dear Evan Hansen may not hit you the way it hit me. There were points of connection I didn’t see coming. But then again, maybe it will. You should go and find out.
The Australian premiere of Dear Evan Hansen is a co-production from Sydney Theatre Company and the Michael Cassel Group. It’s playing at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay, until December 1, and you can find tickets over here. This show is also touring to Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide. Find out more about the national tour over here.
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