Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s inventive musical that combines teenage angst, mental health and social media has been around for a few years now and is well into its UK tour with a week at the Royal and Derngate, Northampton. It’s a show that quickly gained something of a cult status, with most theatregoers getting totally consumed by its fascinating story and emotional score, and a few who just don’t get it.

If you haven’t already seen the show but intend to, please look away for these next two paragraphs because the originality of the story works best if you go into the show with no knowledge of what’s ahead. Evan Hansen is a young man with mental health issues. Taking both medication and therapy, the current attempt to control his neurosis is for him to write regular letters to himself, such as Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, or Dear Evan Hansen, I did well at school today. However, one day he writes himself an honest letter about how it was a bad day and everything went wrong. He is just about to take the copy off the printer when drug-addict and bully Connor Murphy picks it up instead, reads it, and taunts him with it. What’s worse is that the letter contains an indication of the unrequited love Evan has for Connor’s sister Zoe.

Connor then goes missing from school, which makes Evan’s panicking imagination go into overdrive. However, Connor’s absence is because he has taken his own life, and Evan’s letter was found and assumed to be Connor’s suicide note. A whole myth then evolves around the personality of Connor, including the assumption that Evan and Connor were very close friends, which was far from the truth. It gives Connor’s parents comfort to know that he had a close friend, and Evan hasn’t the heart to upset them by explaining what happened. The online grief and virtual deification of Connor continues to grow out of all proportion; can Evan maintain the deception or will he reveal the truth?

Having seen the show in London in 2021, and been impressed by the production and the performances, but still not quite getting the hype, I was keen to see if my reservations about the show have melted at all over the last few years. In short – yes they have! This is a terrific revival, in many ways better than the original, which had an overwhelming stage design, full of digitalised imagery, constantly bombarding you with an impression of feverishly active social media accounts vying with each other to gain the attention of users. There’s no doubt it was impressive and memorable.

However, in this production, directed with a greater feel for the characters and the humanity of the story by Adam Penford, Ravi Deepres’ video design is considerably subtler and much less intrusive. And whilst perhaps this production doesn’t give you quite the same sense of social media shaping our every thought and action, it does allow the characters and the story to develop and take shape more freely and indeed more visibly; ironically, perhaps, the show’s original marketing hashtag of #youwillbefound is now much more appropriate and meaningful. Additionally, Michael Bradley’s nine-piece band gives a tremendous performance of Pasek and Paul’s quirky and varied score, full of emotion and unexpectedly tuneful. This is helped enormously by both the fantastic harmonies and the clarity of diction by all members of the cast. No unnecessary over-amplifications here, and I appreciated for the first time what a great score it is.

There are very good performances throughout the show, but all eyes and ears are on Ryan Kopel as Evan, who gives a totally believable performance of an anxious, nervous teenager starting to gain a little confidence as he finds a purpose in life, albeit based on a lie. The character’s anxiety and neurosis are superbly expressed in his tentative singing of some of the songs, only to be blown away later in the show with his full-bodied and powerful vocals. It must be exhausting to perform, and he does a brilliant job.

Alice Fearn is also fantastic as his mother Heidi, a hard-working single parent who regrets having to spend so much time away from him, and who also learns more about her responsibilities and priorities as the show progresses.  Her duet with Mr Kopel with the song So Big/So Small truly has the power to make your eyes unexpectedly moist. The scene where she goes to the Murphy family for dinner is acted out with the perfect cringeworthiness that it calls for! Lauren Conroy brings out all Zoe’s varied emotions of grief, affection and teenage rebellion, Tom Dickerson is also very credible as Evan’s family friend Jared, one of those ebullient kids who loves a laugh and a bit of banter but also has many an internal conflict, and Vivian Panka is great as the keen-to-be-noticed Alana, who allows power to get to her head.

For our performance, the role of Connor’s mother, Cynthia, was played by understudy Jessica Lim and she has a great voice and presence, and worked well with Richard Hurst’s Larry Murphy to show both the couple’s bickering and genuine suffering. Mr Hurst brought a very nicely understated fatherly love to the simple song To Break in a Glove. And Killian Thomas Lefevre is excellent as Connor, both as the bully and Evan’s conscience-pricker, singing and acting out all the inappropriate content of the emails that the mischievous Jared writes on his behalf.

It’s not often that a touring production beats the original West End show, but this is one such occasion. It’s in Northampton until Saturday 18^th January – although you’ll have to fight for a ticket – and then continues its UK tour right through to July. To coin a phrase, Dear Evan Hansen has finally been found.

Production photos by Marc Brenner

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