By: Cathryn Macey
“Dear Evan Hansen. Today is going to be a good day.”
Talking to yourself is usually regarded as the first sign of “madness” but for 17-year-old Evan Hansen, it’s a self-help strategy. As part of his counsellor’s treatment plan for his debilitating anxiety, Evan (Ryan Kopel) writes letters to himself daily.
Unfortunately, he’s not the only teenager struggling with mental health issues at college. In a tragic and unusual plot twist, Evan’s letters get mistaken for letters from a classmate who takes his own life. Connor Murphy’s (Killian Thomas Lefevre) grieving family find one of Evan’s letters in their son’s possession and assume that Evan and Connor were close friends.
The uncomfortable truth is that Connor never wrote to Evan; Connor only had one of Evan’s letters because he angrily grabbed it from Evan during a fraught disagreement at school. Evan doesn’t reveal the reality about his non-existent relationship with Connor because he can see that his fabricated friendship is an endless source of comfort to Connor’s devastated parents.
A speech Evan delivers in tribute to Connor goes viral and before Evan knows it, for the first time in his life, he has everything he wants: a girlfriend, online and offline adoration and two substitute parents who have the time and money to give him everything he thinks he needs. But just how long can Evan exploit his classmates’ death for his own personal gain?
It’s a highly original plot and one that may take audience members a while to process. Connor is unlikeable when he is alive, yet we can all agree that his fate is terrible. Regardless of our opinions of Connor, the sight of his small single bed after his death brings some difficult emotions home to roost. Thankfully, some light relief comes in the form of a witty duet performed by Evan and (dead) Connor. The teenage audience response to “Sincerely, Me” is particularly animated and the aisles are filled with laughter at the pairs’ immature pranks.
It’s the music that really wows audiences and makes the tough subject matter easier to swallow. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are the song writing duo behind The Greatest Showman and La La Land. Their songs are a great outlet for all of the huge emotions on show tonight. During “Requiem”, Connor’s sister Zoe (Lauren Conroy) sings in an operatic manner about how difficult she is finding it to mourn a brother who was such a “monster” to her. Her performance is raw and relatable, as is her father’s part of the song.
Similarly, songs performed by Evan’s mother (Alice Fearn) are nothing short of harrowing. In “Good For You”, Fearn is feisty and fearless in the way she sings about Evan’s abandonment for a family that can offer him the kind of financial support only she can dream of. The Murphy’s interference in her personal affairs is like a huge smack in the face and through this powerful rock number, we feel its sting. Ouch!
In complete contrast, Fearn’s poignant rendition of “So Big, So Small” is sung with great tenderness. Softer guitar music is used to complement the comforting lyrics of this song which is surely one of the most moving songs about parenting in existence. It completely captures the unconditional nature of parental love.
Dear Evan Hansen shines a light on parent/teen relationships. Through a glimpse behind both the Hansen and the Murphy’s closed curtains we’re invited to think about what teenagers need from their parents as they grow from children to adults, especially in a world increasingly reliant on social media. How can parents help their teens if their teens’ lives are all played out in secret and on a guarded screen?
Morgan Large’s set and use of design reflects Evan’s reliance on technology. Several phone shaped rectangles pop up on to the stage at key moments. When a social media storm brews and Connor’s family are mercilessly trolled by an entire tribe of angry teens, all of the young peoples’ cruel comments appear projected on to the fake phones. Several different unkind vlogs are also played and so layer upon layer, a huge angry wall of mobile phone footage engulfs the stage; this is mob mentality for the social media age and it’s overwhelming.
Impressive as the set, music and script are, it is Ryan Kopel’s performance as Evan Hansen that steals the show. Kopel possesses superhuman levels of stamina; he is barely off stage all night and performs most of the songs. To see a relatively young performer pull off such a high-level performance for the entirety of a lengthy production is absolutely phenomenal; Evan’s character is demanding but Kopel completely nails it. His performance is worth the ticket price alone.
Dear Evan Hansen rolls into Plymouth with a lot of hype surrounding it and the hype is most definitely justified. This is musical theatre at its very best but be prepared to deal with the intense emotions that inevitably accompany such a sensitive subject matter.