DEAR EVAN HANSEN

If audience reaction is anything to go by this touring production of the Broadway sensation is a sure fire hit. I’ve sat through many shows where the audience has risen to its feet and rewarded it with a rapturous standing ovation, whist I have remained firmly in my seat, bemused, bewildered even. But last night at Theatre Royal Brighton I was amongst the first to stand. This is the stuff of real musical theatre, no, this is the stuff of theatre in any of its forms.

Dear Evan Hansen is no lightweight watch, the subject matter is dark, who ever thought that you could write a musical about suicide, bullying and a variety of associated mental health issues? But Steven Levensen, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul did, and they really pull it off. All the central characters have issues, parents, sons, daughter are all struggling. The only characters allowed even a glimmer of humour are friends Jared and Alana but even they have issues of their own, and Tom Dickerson and Vivian Panka deliver exactly the right balance to make those roles work.

Lauren Conroy’s Zoe is finely placed and paced, angry at the start, disbelieving and distant from her family and her voice is so beautiful in tone. Helen Anker and Richard Hurst as the Murphy parents are sharply disfunctional as they hover around their troubled children and fractured marriage. Alice Fearn is powerful in her playing of Heidi Hansen, a mother doing her best to protect her son, but clearly not getting it right. Killian Thomas Lefevre vibrates with anger as the Murphy’s rebel son and truly captures that this piece is above all about feeling isolated, disjointed and discomforted. His performance clearly shows that Dear Evan Hansen is about two unhappy people, two misfits struggling to find their places in an uncomfortable world.

The whole work is beautifully staged, Morgan Large has created a set that seamlessly shifts in time and place, stunning graphic projections, so often ill considered, here are well conceived and delivered and Matt Daw’s lighting is cleanly thought out, uncluttered, stylish in its limited use of colour and avoids trickery. The band deliver the score with precision, a must for a work that rather than being pop based borders on the operatic.

Finally to Ryan Kopel who is charged with the exacting and no doubt exhausting role of Evan. Evan is a complex character, an only child raised by his mother, a single parent working long hours and studying hard to hopefully improve their lives together. Evan is fragile, broken even, a quivering wreck of a teenage boy and although eponymous he is hardly hero. Kopel is extraordinary in every sense, his ability to capture an adolescent on the brink of total breakdown is so very real. Tiny ticks and twitches, a shifting gaze, the constant presence of tears… this is a masterful performance from someone so young. And one that would in a straight forward drama be award winning, but this is a musical and god can this guy sing, bring on those awards! The score is not simple, the lines and themes skip around from low to high registers, the phrasing is deliberately uneasy and Kopel delivers every note, every nuance with both ease and sincerity. He never once moves out of character to deliver a song with pop star attitude, he is a very fine actor singing a role with the clarity and confidence of the very best kind of opera performance. And every word, every lyric is as clear as a bell, in fact clarity of diction is sublime from the entire company, a rare thing in the screeching world of so many contemporary musicals.

Adam Penford’s direction is so precise that it is almost invisible, he releases a sense of reality in these performances that is both credible and creditable and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s choreography is equally precise, well placed and unobtrusive.

You may by this point realise that I liked this a lot. I went along knowing the score, having seen the film (not a patch on this) and full of expectations. I was not to be disappointed, this stunning touring production deserves to be in the West End. Fight for a seat, if you can’t get one here then travel to see it somewhere else, you will not be disappointed.

Andrew Kay

15 October

Theatre Royal Brighton

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