Dear Evan Hansen
Prozac, the musical
When we listen to Hamilton in the car, my daughters take Angelica and Eliza’s parts and bully me into being Peggy, the premature old maid: “Daddy said to be home by sundown… Daddy said not to go downtown…” The algorithms determined we’d like “Found/Tonight,” a mashup of “The Story of Tonight” from Hamilton and “You Will Be Found” from Dear Evan Hansen, a musical about a depressed high school boy overwhelmed by anxiety. The song is awful. It illustrates the opposite of synergy by being significantly less than the sum of its considerable parts, but it led me to the musical that features the non-Hamilton half of the song.
Dear Evan Hansen takes place in the present day, which is usually a tough sell for dramatic musicals. Characters bursting into song feels less silly in places and times very different from our own, like Oz or a convent in the hills of Austria before the Nazis roll in. Despite being set in the present day, the songs in DEH feel natural because they are the characters' internal dialogue or are meant to represent the spirit of what is being said instead of what is literally stated.
Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) is a dicey choice for the star of a musical because he is no Jean Valjean. He’s more like a friendless, modern-day Charlie Brown. He suffers from severe social anxiety—not the kind that makes characters more endearing à la Jesse Eisenberg, but the debilitating kind that is especially hard to watch if you can relate to him, which, on some level, most of us can.
In the opening song, “Waving Through a Window,” one of the three outstanding songs in the musical, we see and feel what it’s like to be Evan. He begins writing a letter to himself, an exercise assigned by his psychiatrist. The letter starts hopeful but quickly unravels as self-criticism and self-loathing seep into it. We see shots of his darting eyes, scrunched up fingers, and social media profile showing two followers. We see quick cuts of his fidgeting body and bottles of pills on the nightstand. He glances at his reflection in a mirror and sees a skinny, hunched-over kid with arms permanently locked in a T-rex position, and he is disappointed by what he sees. At school, a chaotic whirl of students surrounds him, but no one acknowledges him. He moves through the hallways like a twitchy, unseen wraith. He enters a gymnasium for a first-day-of-school assembly where other students pour in from all directions. There’s even a marching band and cheerleaders, which feel claustrophobic in close quarters, and I think I would need a maraca full of pills to get through a day of high school like this.
A suicide and a lie give Evan an escape from this solitary pseudo-existence and a taste of human connection. Connor, another troubled, friendless student, kills himself, and his parents find Evan’s letter in his pocket and give it to him, thinking it’s a suicide note that was intended for him since the letter begins “Dear Evan Hansen.” Connor had stolen the letter when Evan printed it out at school for his psychiatrist appointment.
Connor’s parents believe Evan was their son’s only friend and press him for details, desperate to believe Connor didn’t die friendless and alone, that he had secret moments of joy. Connor had struggled with drugs and emotional issues for so long that they can’t remember a time they were happy. His sister, Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever, who will play Abby in the second season of The Last of Us), can only remember his lies and threats of violence. So Evan invents a memory of Connor spending the day with him and heroically taking him to the hospital when he breaks his arm. Evan later fabricates a set of emails they sent back and forth.
The lies comfort and heal Connor’s family. The mom, a very bland Amy Adams, finds peace in knowing her son was not miserable and angry every day of his life until he ended it. Zoe embraces the alternate version of Connor, who secretly cared for her. Even the stepfather (Danny Pino), a tin man who didn’t cry at the funeral, breaks down when Evan invents someone worth mourning.
The lies culminate in the best song of the musical, “You Will Be Found” (the one that is in the unfortunate collision with “The Story of Tonight”), when Evan gives a speech about what Connor meant to him at a school assembly. The speech goes viral and helps thousands of others who struggle with mental health, if the comments section of social media sites are to be believed.
Thousands benefit from Evan’s lies, which aren’t entirely altruistic. Evan gets to be a part of Connor’s family. He dates Zoe, his long-time dream girl. He even gets money for college, which his mother can’t afford. But he loses it all when he tells the truth, as he must, since this movie lacks the courage to embrace the dark thesis: Lies can be wonderful, a panacea to all they touch. This movie exists in a morally unsophisticated world where lies are unsustainable and must always be exposed because they make baby Jesus weep. The movie should have ended half an hour sooner with a beautiful lie and the bold statement that truth has no inherent value. Evan Hansen is no Jean Valjean, so he should have shut up and just enjoyed his life.
Dear Evan Hansen
Written by Steven Levenson; Directed by Stephen Chbosky
2021
137 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Peacock
You’ll like this if you like: Waitress: The Musical (2023)