From Feb. 7-9, anxious high schooler Evan Hansen found himself in Eugene when the emotional Broadway comedy hit the Hult Performing Arts Center.
The Tony Award winning musical has been on Broadway since 2016. The production has toured North America since 2018, bringing a piece of Broadway to theatregoers around the nation. The past weekend, Eugene locals indulged in the musical.
The turbulent story of Evan Hansen, a highschooler suffering from social anxiety, is centered around youth mental health and the feelings that come along with navigating it alone in a largely digital world. The musical leaves audiences crying during one song and laughing and bopping along in another. With elements of romance, thrill, sorrow and humor, audience members are bound to find something they enjoy in this production.
In the February 8 production at The Hult Center, the role of Evan Hansen was played by understudy Michael Perez, who exhibited the uneasiness of Hansen greatly. Evan only has one friend, Jared, and often gets bullied by his peers for being an outcast. His therapist tasks him with writing letters to himself beginning with “Dear Evan Hansen” about how today is going to be a good day. In the show’s most prominent letter, he talks about a girl, Zoe Murphy, who he’s been pining over, and he reveals his immense loneliness and feelings of being invisible. When Zoe’s brother, Connor, finds the letter, he accuses Evan of framing it against him to make him look like an outcast. Before letting Evan explain himself, Connor runs off. Shortly after finding the letter, Connor passes away from suicide, and when his parents find the note, they assume it’s Connor’s last words.
Evan is left to determine whether he tells the truth about the letter or leans into the lie to get closer to Zoe and appease the parents.
The stage was an exact replica of the stage on New York’s Broadway with a simplistic centerpiece of Evan’s room. Around the stage there are screens pinging with social media posts, reflecting the overwhelming feeling of social anxiety in a digital world. A line that really stuck with the audience was when Connor’s parents offered Evan’s mom a glass of wine from a vineyard in Portland. A close tie to home brought laughs from the audience.
With ballads like “If I Could Tell Her,” “You Will Be Found” and “For Forever,” the audience is placed in Evan’s shoes as he determines how best to handle the situation. On the other hand, audiences were uplifted by the friendly energy that comes with “Sincerely, Me,” which features Evan, Jared and Evan’s imagined version of the deceased Connor as they draft fake email correspondences between Connor and Evan before he passed.
“Dear Evan Hansen” was a hit in Eugene and started conversations about youth mental health locally. The Hult Center hosted a community conversation before the show on the ninth focused on youth mental health, the arts, sharing resources and ways the community can be of support.
You can find the Hult Center’s current season here.
