Music Box Theatre
Contorted in anguish, his body writhes precariously before an audience, both in the story and on the stage of the Music Box Theatre. His face streams with sweat and tears, his face quivers, and his hands tremble with the weight upon his shoulders. It is the weight of the world – the weight of being a teenager, which, even in the best of possible worlds, is the worst weight of them all. He stumbles to the ground, melting into a pool of angst and despondency, and just when you think you can’t bear the awkward silence and the agonizing quiet, he launches into ‘You Will Be Found’ – the Act One closer that is a high point of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’, last year’s Tony Award winner for Best Musical. And that’s just the emotional roller-coaster of the last ten minutes of the first act.
With its weighty subject matter and grim modern-day depiction of the desolation of an ever-encroaching online world, ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ seems an unlikely choice for Best Musical material, yet somehow the overriding emotional catharsis of the show, along with a powerful set of songs courtesy of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, makes this a ride worth taking.
It begins in familiar territory for most of us: parent and child growing pains. We’ve all been on one or both ends of that formula, and as the mothers in ‘Anybody Have a Map?’ lament, there is no easy answer. From there, the musical takes off as title character Evan Hansen seeks to conquer his doubts and heal his mysteriously-broken arm, wondering at his inability to connect with others in ‘Waving Through a Window’. After a misguided letter and sudden tragedy lead Evan on a quest requiring deception to ease another family’s pain, the main catalyst sets the musical in motion. Rather than face the truth, Evan crafts a happier version of events that never really happened, but the beauty of ‘For Forever’ is that there is a kernel of truth in the wanting for such a perfect day to be real. That wanting is authentic. If he believes in it enough, if he makes it sound so good that everyone will want to believe in it too, then the lie might be forgiven. It might be given another life as something else, something that soothes and corrects a past that might not be as perfect.
Before things get bogged down in that philosophic contemplation, there is the hilarious trio of ‘Sincerely, Me’ and the comedic relief of Evan’s “family friend†Jared. Such transitions are absolutely vital in such a heavy show, but would be bright spots in any musical treading the boards right now.
As the title character for Wednesday and Saturday matinees, Michael Lee Brown gets the brunt of the emotional walloping, but his physical embodiment and vocal athletics are more than mettle for the task at hand. His Evan Hansen is all frail and flailing delicacy masked by self-deprecating humor, mirroring his mother’s initially over-the-top can-do attitude. When that mask is ripped off, it’s a remarkable thing to watch whether he will replace it with another.
Evan’s two would-be compatriots, Conor Murphy and Jared Kleinman, guide him in ways both hilarious and poignant. As the latter, Will Roland gets the majority of laughs, with impeccable comedic timing and sly delivery. Mike Faist brings typical teen angst and surprising tenderness to the troubled Conor.
The parents here are on equally complex footing. As the mothers, Rachel Bay Jones and Jennifer Laura Thompson are saddled with the weight of their teenage offspring, each dealing with fractured families in their own way. Ms. Jones gets the eleventh-hour tearjerker ‘So Big/So Small’ that finally breaks through to her son. As the lone father in the piece, Michael Park is all stoic, low-growl slumber until he opens up in ‘To Break in a Glove’. By the time Evan’s final salvo comes in ‘Words Fail’, the family that he has created is one to which we all suddenly belong. The need for that is primal and powerful. What happens when it’s taken away is devastating.
‘Dear Evan Hansen’ is about the families we create for ourselves, out of desperation or delusion or the simple need to survive. It’s about the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell each other – to be kind, to be consoling, to get through the day – and how draining and debilitating those lies can become. It’s about the existences we conjure and create, the facades of perfection we try so hard to keep flawless at any price. Mostly, though, it’s about the ways in which we matter, how each of us, despite our growing disenchantment and the ever-crushing way the world works, does in fact matter. And we are not alone. This musical reaches out to make a connection in a world where connecting no longer seems to make a difference. It’s a cry as gripping as a son’s desperate hug for his mother, a longing for a solution as insoluble as the longing for a lost father, and a quest for a moment of meaning as harrowing as the last hold on a tree branch before letting go.
