This review explores the captivating Broadway production of 'Dear Evan Hansen', highlighting its emotional depth, powerful performances, and the complex themes it delves into.
This unfinished show business has been going on for some time. It won six Tony awards in 2016, and it’s probably the biggest recent Broadway musical success not to have premiered in a commercial run here. This elegant and moving co-production from Michael Cassel and the Sydney Theatre Company will please anyone who’s been dying to see it live.Indeed, you really must see this one in the flesh to understand what the fuss is about.
Despite the soaring soundtrack and many accolades,It’s a different creature onstage. Director Dean Bryant unlocks this adolescent drama in a more delicate emotional key than most teen movies. The design is spare but effective, creating a slick, voyeuristically focused production that draws us into the coming-of-age story. The story follows Evan (Noah Woodbridge) who inadvertently bumbles into an ethical and emotional quagmire after the suicide of a classmate, Connor (Harry Targett). Evan didn’t know the dead boy, but due to misinterpreted events – including a letter and the signed cast on his broken arm – Connor’s grieving parents (Martin Crewes and Natalie O’Donnell) mistake Evan for their son’s friend. Rather than telling the truth, Evan invents elaborate emails between himself and Connor, then tries, awkwardly but with some success, to comfort the bereaved family he deceives.A budding romance with Connor’s sister Zoe (Georgia Laga’aia) develops, but when a plan to memorialise Connor suddenly goes viral, Evan’s lies look set to be exposed, and he can turn only to his overworked single mum Heidi (Verity Hunt-Ballard) in a crisis. Playing Evan requires inhabiting the liminal state of adolescence, and Woodbridge takes us there on vocal and dramatic levels. There’s the voice, with its fine upper register and falsetto, equal to the task of vaulting through melodies that waver tenuously between teen sincerity and insecurity, naivety and vulnerability.And the performance surfs ambivalence in a way that keeps the balance of sympathy even, while leaving the emotional terrain uncanny and treacherou
Theater Broadway Dear Evan Hansen Musical Coming-Of-Age
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