The raving success Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen moved to London’s Noël Coward Theatre in November 2019 and fans are flocking to see this fantastic production.
From the minds of the creators of La La Land and The Greatest Showman, Dear Evan Hansen is the hit Broadway musical about a high school kid who has trouble socialising and making friends. Following a heartbreaking event including one of his schoolmates, he winds up gravitating towards a group of people for the very first time.
The cast of the production is led by Sam Tutty, who was selected for the show directly out of stage school, having moved on from Italia Conti Academy of Theater Arts in February and partaking in open auditions with somewhere in the range of 8,000 different potential stars. The part has recently been played by Ben Platt in Broadway, who proceeded to win the Tony Award for the lead actor in a musical for his awe-inspiring performance.
Tutty is joined by other very talented West End cast members including Lucy Anderson, Rebecca McKinnis, Lauren Ward, Doug Colling and Rupert Young.
Evan is a lonely secondary school senior wary of life, the universe, everything. Shouting out and talking in public panics him so much that he would prefer to go hungry than trade chatter with a pizza deliveryman. His harried single mum, Heidi, (Rebecca McKinnis) lets him know, “You can’t succeed if you never try.” Evan agrees; however, you can sense that he accepts all the more firmly in the opposite; “if you don’t try, you cannot fail“.
A specialist advises him to write motivational letters to himself. On the first day of school, one of them falls into the hands of Connor Murphy (Doug Colling), another outsider with drug issues. When Connor takes his own life, his folks discover the letter and believe that Evan was a friend of their child. From the start, this consideration worries Evan, yet he before long acknowledges the job and even quickly turns into an internet sensation. Frequently he is tempted to come clean with Connor’s family, yet he fears to disillusion them and to give up his newly discovered confidence.
With its tuneful pop score and a troubled high school hero, Dear Evan Hansen is a gentle musical, even as it makes careful arrangements not to over sentimentalise the subject.
Truly, the emotional centre can turn at times soppy, and the studies of web culture, courtesy of Steven Levenson’s astute book, are not actually unobtrusive. Overall, it is very hard to not watch this jaw-dropping performance without feeling a unique closeness to these characters.
Close to the play’s end, Tutty emphatically shimmers with tears and sweat. There’s an empathetic consideration taken in the manner he offers Evan’s wincing grin, his gulped chuckle, his habit for pulling at his garments just as though he is scanning for somebody to clutch. Be that as it may, these subtleties feel lived, natural, unrehearsed. What’s more, Tutty’s capacity to pass on feeling through tune is just heavenly and frequently profoundly heart-wrenching.
Don’t miss the opportunity to catch it at the Noël Coward Theatre, now booking until 30 May 2020!