REVIEW: Big Stage Musical Offers Insight Into Serious Teen Struggles
Dear Evan Hansen arrives at the Jubilee Auditorium trailing a tsunami of audience love, a sheaf of great reviews and six Tony Awards – and it’s a musical that deals with mental health.
It runs through Feb. 16.
Totally contemporary, it’s the story of Evan (Stephen Christopher Anthony), an anti-social, awkward and painfully shy 17-year-old who charts a thin line between teen angst and mental illness. His father has abandoned him. His sweet, well-meaning and hard-working mother Heidi (Jessica E. Sherman) is seldom at home. Evan’s enclosed world is held together by a suffocating mix of depression and pills – he’s “always on the outside looking in.”
His therapist advises him to write encouraging letters to himself which begin “Dear Evan Hansen” that express the optimism of the better life he so desperately needs.
In his last year of high school he meets the school bully Connor (Noah Kieserman), the rebellious product of a dysfunctional family. When Connor commits suicide, his parents find one of Evan’s letters and think Evan had provided a lifeline to the disaffected kid. The whole community becomes involved as the internet kicks in; the event goes viral, and becomes the “next big thing.” The lonely and shunned Evan becomes the centre of attention for the first time and begins to co-opt the tragedy – creating a made-up relationship that never existed. He begins to believe his own lies. Those around him join in: Alana (Ciara Alyse Harris), who is impelled to make Connors’ death about her own needs; and Jared (Alessandro Costantini), the self-serving teen entrepreneur who gets some of the best lines in the play.
At this point the show switches gears to allow a move to the required upbeat Broadway-style ending. The intensity of the production goes into overdrive. Evan begins to understand the enormity of what he has done. His loving but guilt ridden Mom rediscovers her sensitive needful son – particularly in the final moments when the two face the past and realize the effect it had on the present in the heartrending song So Big/So Small. The show’s beating heart accelerates. There were few dry eyes in the hall on opening night.
The performances are uniformly superb, led by Anthony in a nuanced virtuoso turn as Hansen. The actor indeed appears to be 17, capturing the loneliness, hesitant speech patterns. nervous giggle and existential desolation. He has an impressive voice that more than meets the enormous demands of the role. He engages you in his first big solo, Waving Through a Window – and a few minutes later cements it with the production’s show-stopping big hit For Forever.
From the beginning Evan is attracted to Connor’s sister Zoe (Stephanie La Rochelle). She’s the antithesis of her bother – sweet and caring. Zoe and Evan share a lovely young love duet called Only Us. Kieserman, whose ghost keeps returning to prod Evan, delivers a moving portrait of a kid who never had a chance. This able actor opens a door and shows us the face of the dark forces that drove him to take his life, and maybe to give him some understanding.
The contemporary rock-pop music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are a perfect mirror of the show’s themes; Steven Levenson’s book insightfully provides shaded and dimensional views of teen life.
Special note should be made of the awesome visual design. Peter Nigrini’s projections, composed of hundreds of screens and countless images, combined with the ever-moving screens of scenic designer David Korins, and the creative lighting of Japhy Weideman, place us in the midst of the visual chaos and anarchy of the internet.
All of this is held together by the sure hand of Broadway directing vet Michael Greif.
By some standards Dear Evan Hansen is smaller than some of the shows Broadway Across Canada has brought us, but it’s just about right for this often serious look at mental illness. You may be emotionally drained but ultimately uplifted as well. If there is a danger of sentimentality here it is doused by the authentic performances. No superheroes or deranged villains – just ordinary people trying to get along in an increasingly complex world.
Photos by Matthew Murphy
