Just in time for a fresh school year, Evan Hansen is back with clammy hands and a lump in his throat, to start a new term. And, perhaps, to banish eerie memories of the musical’s misconceived film adaptation with its original Broadway star, Ben Platt.
This UK tour production boasts an affecting performance from Ryan Kopel (Newsies) as the isolated Evan, taken in by a family who wrongly believe him to be the secret best friend of their son, Connor, in the aftermath of Connor killing himself. With his own father absent and his mother stretched at work, Evan gains a set of attentive substitute parents, a longed-for girlfriend in Connor’s sister, Zoe, and the chance to go from zero to hero. With each new lie he tells about being Connor’s pal, his status at school grows.
Opening with a clatter of chat notification sounds, Adam Penford’s well-paced production prominently displays a hashtag for the show before both halves. Ironically, however, it fails to fully capture the digital domain which exists in parallel to IRL school days and which can be even more brutal. Aside from some aggressively red lockers, with spotlights tucked inside, these corridors are similarly tame. Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s choreography for a mob of rucksack-carrying students never quite conveys their precarious shifts in allegiances as Evan’s story comes unstuck.
With his glasshouse set of frosted sliding doors and mirrored panels, designer Morgan Large seemingly takes a cue from Waving Through a Window and that solo is sung with moving torment by Kopel. Benj Pasek and Justin Paul front-load their best songs, which leaves the second act wanting, but before the interval You Will Be Found remains one of the great modern musical numbers, an elegant synthesis of the story so far. A seven-piece band under Michael Bradley’s musical direction excels on Requiem, especially the strings, with Lauren Conroy as Zoe hitting the right note of rage at how her brother has been redrawn by her parents after his death.
Connor is played sympathetically by Killian Thomas Lefevre who adds a smiley when signing Evan’s arm cast, an act that in other hands has seemed more antagonistic. Connor’s subsequent reanimation for principally comic scenes featuring a fellow student (Tom Dickerson), plus Pasek and Paul’s unusually underpowered song Disappear, never carries the emotional charge of a similar device in Next to Normal. The characterisation of Connor’s parents (played by Helen Anker and Richard Hurst) would gain strength if they were depicted in a more immediate maelstrom of grief, although Alice Fearn brings a realistic weariness to Evan’s mum. In a roundly well-performed production, Vivian Panka wrings complexity from the role of Alana, a pupil profiteering from tragedy.
Either in laughter or anguish, one child after another states in Steven Levenson’s book that their parents have no idea about their lives. Despite the show’s warmth, you’re left with a chilling sense of disconnect between the adult world and the teenage reality under their noses, hidden away like a hastily closed laptop.
At Nottingham Playhouse until 28 September. Then touring
