Dear Evan Hansen
Opening Night: December 4, 2016
Theater: Music Box Theatre
All his life Evan Hansen has felt invisible. To his peers, to the girl he loves, sometimes even to his own mother. But that was before he wrote the letter—that led to the incident—that started the lie—that ignited a movement—that inspired a community—and changed Evan’s status from the ultimate outsider into the somebody everyone wants to know. But how long can Evan keep his secret? And at what price?
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December 4, 2016
As the title character in “Dear Evan Hansen,” a lonely teenager who inadvertently becomes a social media sensation and a symbol of the kindness that is often cruelly absent in high school hallways, the marvelous young actor Ben Platt is giving a performance that’s not likely to be bettered on Broadway this season. What’s more, this gorgeous heartbreaker of a musical, which opened at the Music Box Theater on Sunday, has grown in emotional potency during its journey to the big leagues, after first being produced in Washington and Off Broadway. Rarely – scratch that — never have I heard so many stifled sobs and sniffles in the theater.
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December 4, 2016
What does it look like when a star is born? In the case of Ben Platt, the astonishing young actor who plays the title role in Dear Evan Hansen, it’s a bit like an actual birth: beautiful but strange and wet, tinged with confusion and danger. Evan is painfully introverted; he has no friends in high school, and even the thought of talking to a girl he likes, Zoe (the poignantly unaffected Laura Dreyfuss), makes his palms perspire. Platt’s performance extends that to his whole body; when he sings, his face often gleams with sweat. Yet the effect is not off-putting; Evan is immensely lovable, even when he makes terrible mistakes. He speaks in rushes of instant regret, as though frantically digging a hole to bury himself in, and his intense awkwardness is filtered through first-rate comic timing, high-wire dramatic acting and a gorgeously expressive tenor voice.
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December 4, 2016
Most teenagers — despite appearances to the contrary — are fragile optimists. And Ben Platt, the astonishing star of the extraordinary new Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” has a way of throwing lines out into the wind, head usually cocked to the side, brave, aspirant, unsure of where those salvos will land, terrified of being blown over when they come roaring back to crush his soul. This performance by an actor who first gained attention for his stage work in “The Book of Mormon” in Chicago is as profound and heart-breaking a portrayal of a 17-year-old as one might ever hope to see.
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December 4, 2016
Urgent concerns about lost teens, powerless parents and the difficulty of achieving emotional connection in an age of overwhelming social media run like electric currents through the smart, deeply felt and altogether extraordinary new musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” which has opened on Broadway following an acclaimed Off-Broadway run earlier this year.
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December 4, 2016
The exquisite new musical Dear Evan Hansen opened Sunday on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre, following runs at Arena Stage in Washington D.C. and, last spring, at off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre. In the only cast change from the Second Stage production, Michael Park has returned to the role (played off-Broadway by John Dossett) he created in Washington.) Here are updated excerpts from Deadline’s earlier review:
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