It can be easy to recoil when you actually hear the basic story of the acclaimed hit musical Dear Evan Hansen. A high schooler with no friends (Evan) fabricates a narrative that he was close with a classmate who committed suicide (Connor) to comfort his grieving parents, sparks up a relationship with the dead boy's sister (Zoe), and goes viral with this fake inspirational tale.
Yikes! Feel free to cringe!
But that discomfort is, at least in part, the point. Dear Evan Hansen delivers a complex and authentically messy look at the ways in which people seek empathetic bonds in the face of extreme loneliness and tragedy. It's a wonderfully challenging piece of theater bolstered by, easily, some of the best songs written for the stage in the past decade. It's alright to recoil from Dear Evan Hansen, and it's equally valid to absolutely love the show. You can make that call for yourself when Dear Evan Hansen comes to Spokane for the first time (March 14-19).
"This is a show about connection and about the need for connection. That's a very, very human need," says Alaina Anderson, who plays Connor's sister/Evan's love interest Zoe Murphy in the touring production.
"And I think that as much as Evan gravitates towards the Murphy family and sort of becomes embedded in them because he's so desperate for that connection, it also does equally stem from a need that they have for him to fill this hole that's suddenly arisen in their lives. All of the characters in the show are doing their best, and I think you can be doing your best and trying to do a good thing and still not be innocent, still be complicit in the end results."
"You know, life is kind of gross," adds John Hemphill with a laugh. The Tacoma native plays Connor's dad, Larry Murphy, who gets a second chance at raising a son via Evan.
"And I think that our job is to approach this story from truth," he continues. "I feel like as long as we are doing that, the way that the audience takes the show is going to be personal to them. So it's not about manipulation. It's just presenting this story in truth. And beyond that, I think that life is messy, and we just have to not judge it and allow it to be what it is."
While the thorny empathy machine that is the story might rub certain people the wrong way, the songwriting of the show is borderline undeniable. There's a reason it won six Tony Awards in 2017 including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Orchestrations. The show is packed with extremely catchy, soaring, anthemic mostly piano-driven pop songs written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul that get stuck in one's head after a single listen: "You Will Be Found," "Waving Through a Window," "Sincerely, Me," etc. The show's musical signature is so distinct that you could recognize a Dear Evan Hansen-type song after a few chords being played.
"I remember hearing the soundtrack like years before [I auditioned], when it first came out, being impressed with how fresh it was," says Anderson. "It's very not classic musical theater, it's much more bespoke influences, and pop influences and some rock influences. And that was just really cool to listen to, it's like a musical theater song that I can blast in the car with my dad who's not a musical theater person, and he'll enjoy it. [laughs]"
The show also was ahead of its time in terms of depicting and criticizing social media. The stage presentation very effectively features an array of glass screens to depict the frantic online world, and the downsides of bandwagoning internet falsehoods resonated in the script, years before the term "milkshake duck" was coined (Urban Dictionary it). In any given scene, one character is withholding information with someone else, often leading to comedic, sweet and heart-wrenching moments (like when Evan sings a love song directly to Zoe — "If I Could Tell Her" — through the guise of his sentiments being Connor's thoughts).
"What's interesting about the show in general is that every character on the stage has an arc and a journey," says Hemphill. "Everyone seems to get what they want or think they want, and then they have to wrestle with maybe losing that thing."
We as humans are far from infallible. Even when we act with the best empathetic intentions, it's hard to not get caught up if those paths lead to the fulfillment of personal desires. Dear Evan Hansen doesn't even momentarily shy away from walking that precarious tightrope in order to evoke emotions. So if you're heading to the musical, don't make the mistake Hemphill did the first time he saw the show and be unprepared for the show's emotional impact.
"Everybody bring tissues!" Anderson says with a laugh. ♦
Dear Evan Hansen • March 14-18 at 7:30 pm, March 18 at 2 pm, March 19 at 1 and 6:30 pm • $48-$96 • First Interstate Center for the Arts • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • firstinterstatecenter.org
