How do you create a stage set that encapsulates the mind of a teenager, especially one who feels as lost and invisible as the eponymous protagonist in DEH? High-schooler Evan is as mentally delicate as a Cleveland Browns’ fan, tormented by decades of failure and trembling at the threshold of another season of (possibly? likely? inevitably?) dashed hopes.
Evan is isolated at school and at home, where he lives with his divorced mom, tormented by a mind that is splintered by adolescent angst. As he explains in “Waving Through a Window,” he feels himself a nonentity floating helpless and alone: “On the outside, always looking in/Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?/’Cause I’m tap-tap-tapping on the glass/I’m waving through a window.”
There’s nothing particularly new or revealing about Evan’s feelings of not being heard or seen. But the scenic and projection designs, by David Korins and Peter Nigrini respectively, turn the young man’s confusion into a spectacular, evocative display of moving, blinking, overlapping words and images projected onto stationary and gliding panels. For anyone who is now or ever has been a teenager, you get the rush that, yep, that’s how it feels.
The only person who pays attention to Evan, apparently, is Connor the class bully. Connor pushes Evan around and looks for other ways to torment easy-target Evan. At the advice of a therapist, Evan had been writing a series of upbeat notes to himself addressed to “Dear Evan Hansen,” as a way for him to get a “third-person” perspective on himself.
But one day Connor finds one of those notes on the school printer and stuffs it into his pocket, saving it as fuel for a future harassment. Even poor Evan’s broken arm, caused by a fall, comes in for abuse, since none of the other students wants to sign his cast. So Connor does, scrawling his name in huge letters as another taunt.
But when Evan is called into the Principal’s office and told that Connor has committed suicide, everything shifts. Connor’s distraught parents—Larry (John Hemphill) and Cynthia (Lili Thomas)—ask Evan about touching and emotionally revealing note found on Connor’s body, and no one can figure out why Connor would have written such a letter to Evan, a boy he pushed around unmercifully.
Evan allows them to think Connor wrote the note, thinking that it will ease the parents’ pain and, by the way, maybe help him get closer to Connor’s sister Zoe (Alaina Anderson), whom he has a crush on. And since Connor was the only person who signed his cast, it appeared that the Evan-Connor friendship was real.
From there, the little white lie Evan indulges in takes on a life of its own, thanks to the internet, and soon people in town and beyond are following the story of Evan and Connor. Meanwhile, Evan is being teased by his pal Jared (an amusingly hyper Pierce Wheeler) as the whole situation spins into a viral tower of misconceptions that is fated to come crashing down.
In the emotionally complex role of Evan’s mom Heidi, Coleen Sexton finds the exact mix of love and exasperation, brought to fruition in her concluding song, “So Big/So Small.” And in the title role, Anthony Norman is every inch the troubled teen who makes wrong decisions for all the right reasons. And he handles his heavy singing chores with a voice that has the ring of raw youth, as you would expect.
The intriguing story is fully supported by a melodic, often powerful score and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. And it misses the trap of falling into maudlin sentimentality since the book by Steven Levenson has enough snark to keep it all from becoming a trite after-school special. Huge props go to director Michael Greif and choreographer Danny Mefford for the entire package including swift, seamless scene transitions.
The show (and the movie that followed) has been accused by some of being manipulative when it comes to the issue of mental health, since Connor’s suicide is mostly used as a plot device without spending any time exploring Connor’s life in any way. It’s a valid point, and one worthy of discussion.
But in purely theatrical terms, this version of Dear Evan Hansen is a clear winner.
Dear Evan Hansen
Through May 21 at Playhouse Square, Connor Palace Theater, 1615 Euclid Ave., playhousesquare.org, 216-241-6000.
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This article appears in May 3-17, 2023.
