Displaying items by tag: DEAR EVAN HANSEN

Paramount Theatre’s staging of Dear Evan Hansen brings fresh dimension to the Tony‑winning contemporary musical. Under Jessica Fisch’s direction, the story follows Evan, an anxious, isolated teenager whose therapist‑assigned letters to himself inadvertently spark a misunderstanding with the Murphy family - one that grows into a lie swelling far beyond them and eventually into a community‑wide phenomenon. What begins as a desperate attempt to feel seen evolves into a moral knot that forces Evan - and everyone around him - to confront grief, loneliness, and the universal hunger for connection.

The Murphys are drawn into Evan’s story with a fragile mix of hope and heartbreak, briefly finding in him an echo of the son they lost. His presence momentarily pulls their shattered family together, even as the truth threatens to reopen long‑buried wounds. The family’s grief feels immediate, Evan’s anxiety is rendered with nuance, and the show’s viral‑culture elements land with a more human, grounded weight.

While the video projections are deployed with striking precision that greatly assist in the storytelling, Fisch’s staging ultimately leans into the intimacy at the core of the piece. Rather than echoing the Broadway production’s digital spectacle, Paramount foregrounds character, relationships, and the rawness of teenage interior life.

The score - including “Waving Through a Window,” the very powerful and moving “You Will Be Found,” and “For Forever” - lands with the kind of vocal power and clarity that Paramount’s acoustics tend to amplify beautifully. The production highlights the contrast between the soaring, hopeful music and the messy, complicated truth underneath Evan’s choices.

Overall, Paramount’s Dear Evan Hansen becomes less a story about the internet and more a story about the quiet ache of wanting to matter. It’s intimate, empathetic, and emotionally direct - the kind of staging that makes the show feel newly personal.

“Dear Evan Hansen explores the boxes we put ourselves in: the emotional, the metaphorical, and the digital ones we post, like and share,” says Jessica Fisch, making her Paramount Theatre directorial debut with the Chicago Regional Premiere of the Tony Award-winning musical. It features (from left) Devin DeSantis as Larry Murphy, Elaine Watson as Alana, Bri Sudia as Cynthia Murphy, Pablo David Laucerica as Jared and Isabel Kaegi as Zoe.

The cast is exceptional - let’s take a moment to celebrate each of them.

Paramount Theatre’s Dear Evan Hansen finds its emotional center in Cody Combs, whose Evan is tender, tightly wound, and achingly human. Combs, in his Paramount debut, captures Evan’s anxious spirals and fragile hopes with remarkable clarity, pairing superb acting with vocal work that feels both raw and crystalline, grounding the entire production in authenticity. His performance never slips into caricature; instead, he shapes a portrait of a young man straining to breathe in a world that feels unbearably loud.

Evan's mother Heide Hansen is played by Megan McGinnis who brings a beautifully layered warmth to the role. Her scenes with Combs pulse with a lived‑in tension  - the kind of love that’s fierce, imperfect, and stretched thin. McGinnis’s voice carries both exhaustion and devotion, making Heidi’s arc one of the production’s most affecting threads.

As Zoe Murphy, Isabel Kaegi delivers a performance full of quiet strength and emotional transparency. She sidesteps the trope of the unreachable girl, giving Zoe a grounded, searching presence. Her chemistry with Combs feels gentle and believable, especially in the moments when her grief and Evan’s longing quietly intersect.

Jake DiMaggio Lopez makes a striking impression as Connor Murphy, balancing volatility with a haunting vulnerability. We really feel for him. His presence lingers long after he leaves the stage, shaping the show’s emotional landscape in ways that feel honest rather than sensational. Taking on the role of gamer and Evan’s “family friend” Jared Kleinman, Pablo David Laucerica brings sharp comedic timing and unexpected warmth to. His dry wit consistently lands, yet he still reveals the softer insecurities beneath the sarcasm.

Bri Sudia and Devin DeSantis anchor the Murphy household with sharply etched, deeply felt performances. Sudia’s vocally impressive Cynthia Murphy is all open‑hearted ache - a mother clinging to hope with both hands - while DeSantis’s Larry carries a quieter, more guarded grief. Together, they create a portrait of a family fractured not by a single tragedy, but by years of unspoken pain.

Rounding out this wonderful cast, Elaine Watson brings crisp intelligence and real emotional nuance to Alana Beck, capturing her need to matter with disarming sincerity and seeming confidence. She becomes a quiet mirror to Evan - another teen outrunning her own loneliness in a very different way.

This cast moves with remarkable cohesion. Every scene feels interconnected, every emotional beat supported by the ensemble’s shared sense of truth. Combs’s Evan doesn’t exist in isolation; he’s shaped by McGinnis’s tenderness, Kaegi’s resilience, Lopez’s lingering shadow, and the layered grief Sudia and DeSantis bring to the Murphy household. In fact, every character is beautifully shaped. Their performances lock into one another like facets of the same story, creating a production that feels cohesive, intimate, and deeply human.

For a story centered on so‑called “losers,” this production proves itself a winner in every sense. And though the subject matter is heavy, there’s plenty of levity and genuine laugh‑out‑loud moments to keep the balance just right.

With a book by Steven Levenson and music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the musical premiered at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in July 2015. Since then, it has traveled nationally and internationally - and now Chicago‑area audiences get to experience it in one of the region’s most beautiful venues, the Paramount Theatre.

Highly recommended.

Dear Evan Hansen is being performed at downtown Aurora’s Paramount Theatre through March 22^nd. For tickets and/or show information, visit https://paramountaurora.com/events/dear-evan-hansen/.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

In the world before, when the availability of musical theater was just a given, just another one of life’s perks I took for granted, there was a show that hadn’t yet been available, at least not to me. I’d been perked up, waiting to see it since it became the next big thing in 2016 or 2017, waiting for the national tour to hit Chicago. Missing the brief 2019 stopover, I was all set for the 2020 production…

…now, here in 2022 or whenever it is, that production is finally here…

And yes, the current run of Dear Evan Hansen at the James M. Nederlander Theatre was worth the wait!

In the ensuing years, our whirlwind world’s made media and songs and moments come and go, and I’d totally forgotten about the show, about what I’d known about it before, about all the hype all those hype cycles ago. Which made me come into this production more in the dark than I think I ever have for a show. This was new, like if I’d walked into Broadway’s Music Box Theatre in 2016, before all the hype and the Tony awards and everything else, and I was just there to enjoy a really good musical. And this musical proved to be just that, thanks to a stellar cast and crew.

As the titular Evan, Anthony Norman transforms himself over the course of the show. At first, I wasn’t sure if his jitters were actual jitters or the character, even as he showed he could really sing. But Norman’s Evan really comes out of his shell, for better or for worse, as the story progresses. And what a voice—I’ve still got “For Forever” going through my head.

Because, despite the heavy subject material, and the light the show has shone on important issues, this show is less about its story than it is about the songs and the opportunities they give a cast of really skilled vocalists to sing them. And this cast sing the heck out of them.

The star of the show, for both me and my daughter, was Nikhil Saboo as Connor Murphy. Sullen and intimidating and scary in life, Saboo’s Connor as 21^st-century Jacob Marley is the exact opposite—providing a heavy show some of its lighter moments, especially when he leads Evan and a friend through the hilarious “Sincerely, Me.”

And Evan’s friends all get their moments, as well. Alaina Anderson’s Zoe Murphy transforms as the show goes on, much like Evan. And Pablo David Laucerica’s Jared and Micaela Lamas’ Alana bring both levity and humanity—both of them skilled character actors and both talented singers—as do John Hemphill and Lili Thomas as the Murphy parents.

But Coleen Sexton’s overworked and doing-her-best mother, Heidi Hansen, is perhaps the truest character, the heart of the play, looking in at others’ hurt while navigating her own, while navigating life. Maybe it’s me, as the dad there with his kid, but Sexton was the show’s heart and soul, and the show has a lot.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the show’s musicians, visible above and behind David Korins’ screentime set. Garret Healey leads the orchestra through all of these wonderful songs, including beautiful cello by Tahirah Whittington and great guitar work by Matt Brown and Eric Stockton.

When I wanted so badly to see Dear Evan Hansen all those years ago, I had no clue how long I’d wait to see it. But the waiting made seeing this current production, playing at the James M. Nederlander Theatre through December 31, all the sweeter.