ADOLESCENCE is probably the most difficult period in anyone’s life. Ideas of advice on how to handle this period may change and some psychiatrists even believe you can by-pass it and go straight from childhood to adulthood. In an era where self-examination is encouraged far more than it was in previous times, and in which we now have the internet and social media at our disposal, the present generation must find it easier to negotiate a pathway through the minefield of adolescence than any of their predecessors.
Steven Levenson’s script, backed up by award-winning composers and lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, gives the lie to most of those theories, as it introduces us to socially-anxious senior college student Evan Hansen as he struggles to make contact with his fellow students, understand the pressures his single mother Heidi (Alice Fearn) has trying to give him a better start in life, and get closer to his ideal girl, Zoe Murphy (Lauren Conroy).
Ryan Kopel’s bumbling, mumbling Evan fits that picture ideally. When one of his “Dear Evan Hansen” letters, which, on the advice of his therapist, he has written to himself, is found after the suicide of aggressive social misfit student Connor Murphy, it is mistakenly understood that the two boys were close friends. Evan jumps at the chance place himself at the centre of events. With the connivance of ironic computer wizard Jared Kleinman (Tom Dickerson), the power that the internet and social media has over today’s generation is frighteningly exposed, when a string of false “Dear Evan” letters to Connor are created.
As Evan’s social position grows, so Ryan’s draws away from his mother and closer to Connor’s wealthy, feuding parents (Helen Anker’s overdramatic Cynthia and Richard Hurst’s cold hearted Larry), trying to be the son they wanted, unlike the one they actually had. At first sceptical, Zoe is later drawn to Evan. He also acquires an alter ego in the form of Connor’s ghost (Killian Thomas Lefevre), who proves to be much wiser and more understanding as a phantom than he ever was in real life.
Add ferociously ambitious fellow student Alana Beck (Vivian Panka) into this volatile mix and you can immediately see a recipe for disaster, as the initial small lie grows bigger and bigger. With Pasek and Paul’s score and music offering one passionately soaring number after another, which the principal performers take holding nothing back in reserve, you know something has to break, and it does … as Evan confesses to everything.
What at first appears to be an utter disaster proves in many ways to be a blessing in disguise, bringing an understanding between Connor’s parents as they realise that while both loved their son in different ways, they never understood him. Lauren Conroy, playing with great delicacy, produces a Zoe who has survived the traumas of adolescence and Evan is driven back to the security of his mother’s arms, a much safer and more honest place to find guidance that the wilderness of social media and the internet.
GRP