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| Dear Evan Hansen |
There's a lot of incredible theater that premieres on Broadway every year, providing new entertainment for audiences, often with thought-provoking messages and a theme that resonates with audiences. So what exactly happens when a show exceeds the norms, creating its own style with raw emotions projected on a minimalist stage by an insecure teen named Evan? Dear Evan Hansen won the Tony for Best Musical in 2016 and is currently embarking on its first U.S. tour. It is currently playing at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles, CA and brought the power of its original story to audiences willing to be swayed by something universal: the feeling of belonging. There have been many shows that have explored these themes, but there's a good chance that none have done it with such bravado and visceral innovation as this. It's a show that must be seen to be believed. It's the future of live theater.
As audiences stumble into the theater, they are met with the bare set. All that is visible is Evan's bed underneath a series of electronic screens draped from the ceiling, projecting text messages and images. Even for those who attend theater regularly, the sight would play more experimental than any professional show. Even with these screens cutting to a green phone symbol (the same on every audience member's cell phone), there's a cheeky knowledge that what's to come is going to be different. It's going to be a show as much about drama as an embrace of 21st century culture. Where most shows have conflict depicting characters using cell phones and computers as riveting drama, it's one of the essentials of Dear Evan Hansen, which cleverly mixes realism with an expertly lit stage that symbolizes characters talking not from the same room, but from distant social media accounts. It's one of the few shows to adapt something like Twitter to the stage and make it feel essential. Thankfully, the rest of what follows surpasses the gimmicky set.
Evan Hansen (Stephen Christopher Anthony) is the protagonist; an insecure kid with a broken arm and a story to tell about it. The title comes from letters that he writes to himself as a form of therapy. These words are projected, in fragments, on the screens behind him. In this moment, the backdrop becomes a beautiful collage of the characters' interior monologues, reflecting jumbled words fighting for semblance. There is nothing to distract from these words except a singular prop (a bed, a living room, a hallway) sitting center stage for audiences to project their own experiences onto. Evan sees himself as invisible until one day he meets Connor Murphy (Marrick Smith), whose death connects Evan to a variety of people in ways that are powerful yet nefarious.
The story on paper sounds like an after school TV drama. It's a misunderstood kid learning to belong. However, that is only one of the components that makes the seemingly unexceptional Evan stand out more. As a senior in high school, he has his future ahead of him and no awareness about how to proceed. He comes from a broken home, living with only his mother Heidi (Jessica Phillips). His best "friend" Jared (Jared Goldsmith) doesn't even think of him as more than a family acquaintance. How could he possibly belong in this world? With the screens consistently depicting some chaotic picture of social media and Word documents, the audience has an interior look into his struggle that is technically ambitious. As much as things are missing from the set, they're filled in by the audience's imagination, causing them to focus on Evan's emotions.
It helps that the music by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have delivered one of the greatest songbooks of modern theater. There are some soul-piercing numbers like "Waving Through a Window" which embrace the emptiness of the stage as Evan sings about his timidity in life. His voice cracks through the song, occasionally building to beautiful, triumphant melodies that bring an earnestness to him. Even the limited choreography captures the awkward dynamic that Evan shares with everyone in the ensemble (which, even in dance numbers, only equals eight people on stage). It's minimalism perfected, managing to make these characters feel more isolated in the world, connected by the lights that shine down on them, symbolizing more than the conventional spotlight. Now they're cell phone screens that cut out abruptly when Evan shuts his laptop. Even the way that characters stand behind the screens gives symbolic transparency between characters. While the music numbers are where the show gets to shine, every element creates a new understanding of what can be done on a stage.
What's even more incredible is that with tender subjects (teen suicide, mental illness), writer Steven Levenson has created a unique world where emotions can be felt by the back row just as much as Evan's awkward movement as he tries to stomach confusing dinners with the Murphy family. The show feels genuine, making the nuanced response to grief a prominent focus. Not everyone is going to be rattled, and Levenson perfectly conveys it through performances that range from comic to tragic. No character is without humor and life, which makes the show more refreshing. With that said, the best moments come when everything pulls away and what's left is two characters talking in silence. It's when the characters finally talk about something real and personal that the emotion finally crescendos into something powerful. The tightrope is perfectly acted by a cast who know when to pull back.
Dear Evan Hansen isn't a show that can simply be talked about. It has to be witnessed to fully understand what makes its execution so compelling. As much as the audience knows the themes and their prescient importance to contemporary youth, to see it performed in a way embodying of a generation who relates to their emotions differently than any generation before is a compelling force of nature. With a soundtrack of undeniably powerful music that is sure to rattle the audience to feel their deepest emotions, the show conveys struggles in a way that's both abstract and universal. The set design alone is worth checking out the show for, as it helps to convey the themes in a fragmented way that helps the audience to piece it together in their own way. It may sound like a gimmick, but it's executed perfectly down to clever lighting and stage use that makes the stage feel like everything from a school hallway to some otherworldly location on the internet. It's exactly what theater should be trying to strive towards, and it proves that a lot of the taboos of our culture (technology, depression, etc.) aren't limitations to theater, but areas to improve upon.
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