Riding a head of steam generated by the acclaim for its world premiere at the Arena Stage in Washington, “Dear Evan Hansen” will bow in New York at Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre, beginning March 23. The musical, about a nerdy young teenager who finds himself at the center of a social media storm, boasts several elements which augur well not only for the show itself but also for Broadway.Chief among these is a score by one of the most promising young songwriting teams in the business. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, both age 30, have three distinguished musicals already under their belt: “A Christmas Story,” for which they were Tony nominated; “Dogfight,” based on the 1991 River Phoenix-Lili Taylor movie; and “James and the Giant Peach,” a musical adaptation of the Roald Dahl children’s book classic.“Evan Hansen,” loosely inspired by the tragic death of a student at Pasek’s high school outside Philadelphia, boasts a book by 31-year-old playwright Steven Levenson (“Core Values,” “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin”) and stars Ben Platt (“Pitch Perfect”), who has appeared on Broadway as Elder Cunningham in “The Book of Mormon.”This young team has been steered by director Michael Greif, who has shown a special talent in developing wholly original material, including “Rent” and the Pulitzer-prize-winning “Next to Normal.” As in the latter, “Evan Hansen” deals with family dynamics that in this case take a poignant turn when parents, grieving for their dead son, mistakenly take the socially shy Hansen as having been a close friend of the deceased. Spurred on by the attention he suddenly is receiving from his high school classmates as well as the solace he seems to be providing to the family, Hansen continues to spin a web of deceit until the truth wills out, as it always does. Writing in the New York Times, Charles Isherwood noted, “the musical invests in a familiar cultural trope—the angst of the lonely teenager—with freshness and vibrancy. Ill-considered though it may be, Evan’s attempt to fill the void left behind by Connor and the void in his own heart, feels affectingly truthful. ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ also raises the potent questions of whether our booming social networks are causing more adolescent despair than they can possible cure.”Peter Marks of The Washington Post wrote, “The heart-piercingly lovely new musical…is a trip to the exciting place that musical theater sometimes takes you, a destination of wholly unexpected impact, when characters burst into song and you, in spite of yourself, into tears.”Of a pedigree with the challenging “Next to Normal” — also developed at Second Stage — and coming on the heels of the bold and daring “Fun Home,” “Dear Evan Hansen” seems just as timely and resonant as those two excellent musicals and certainly a reason to be sanguine about the future of the American musical.
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