Dear Evan Hansen details the rise and fall (and rise again) of a lonely, morally reprehensible teenage boy. It poses the question, “Can you be forgiven for all your sins during the third act, if it makes for an uplifting endnote to a musical about teenage suicide?”. The answer: yes!
Evan Hansen, as we meet him, has one desperately unrequited crush and no friends. This changes after a chance encounter with school outcast Connor (who—spoiler—later takes his own life). In the wake of his death, Connor’s parents, sister and fellow students scramble to find any remnants of their son/brother/acquaintance, leading them to mistakenly conclude that Evan was his closest friend. Sensing his social status benefits off this complete lie, Evan doesn’t exactly correct them.
Your ability to enjoy Dear Evan Hansen is therefore entirely contingent upon your ability to accept Dear Evan Hansen’s shockingly dark plot as grounds for a musical production. If you find yourself receptive to the Mental Health Matters discourse of it all, you’ll be surprised to find the most moving moments of the musical are those centred around Evan and Connor’s parents, not the deceased or lonely teenagers themselves.
The Edinburgh Playhouse performance begins with the frantic ‘Anybody Have a Map?’, during which Ryan’s parents and Evan’s single mother Heidi (played by absolute stand-out Alice Fearn) reveal the anxiety under their surface of parental calm. ‘I don’t know if you can tell / but this is just me pretending to know’, Heidi sings as she grapples with her son’s therapy and her shifts at the hospital and her night classes. It’s a particularly touching nod to that slightly uncomfortable truth: it’s all well and good being a lost and depressed teenager, but what if even the adults don’t know what they’re doing? Alice Fearn excels later in the performance too, with the rock-ish ‘Good For You’, during which—if you close your eyes—it’s like Alanis Morrisette is in the room, singing about how pissed off she is with her selfish excuse of a son.
Speaking of, Evan himself is played spectacularly by Scot Ryan Kopel, who appears so tense throughout you fear for his joints: he is alarmingly good at teenage boy body language. His shoulders permanently raised, gulping comically at inopportune times, and jittering at the slightest social interaction. You feel sympathy for the most unsympathetic character ever conceived, and for that Kopel should be commended.
It’s not all doom, gloom, and parental sadness however: the enjoyment apex of the entire production is probably ‘Sincerely, Me’. It’s a slapstick banger of a number during which Evan and kind-of friend Jared compose fake emails to Connor in order to further solidify their great friendship lie. All the actors are clearly having a mighty fine time, including Connor’s ghost (Killian Thomas Lefevre, at his most J.D. from Heathers) who bounces about the stage doing jazz hands and rubbing his nipples on beat. This is the musical at its best, when it gives in to the innate absurdity of its plot and has a bit of fun with its incredibly talented performers.
Throughout, Dear Evan Hansen also faces the maybe impossible task of representing Gen Z internet culture on stage … without being cringe. Is this particular staging successful? Not really, but it has its moments—Alana (Vivian Panka), a Linkedin Warrior type, who similarly feigns a friendship with Connor, speaks with an utterly perfected influencer intonation. Hauntingly Instagram-y. During references to ‘the online world’, the staging turns into a sort of Temu TikTok, as hundreds of faux tweets and posts and videos reel across the screen—one reads, ‘Sending prayers from VERMONT’, which is admittedly hilarious. Sending prayers from VERMONT’, which is admittedly hilarious. Donatella VERSACE.
Ultimately, Dear Evan Hansen alternates between hitting the nail on the head with its representation of how shockingly cynical teenagers can be, and missing the nail by about 5 miles in its representation of mental illness. It’s at turns clichéd, at turns something much more. Since its inception, the musical has meant very much to very many people, and this particular staging will undoubtedly do so too: for this, Dear Evan Hansen should be praised. But not too much!
(Image courtesy of Marc Brenner via The Edinburgh Playhouse)