I love me some musical theater. So while I had heard from a friend that Dear Evan Hansen had a deeply unpleasant storyline, when my mom offered to buy me and my brother, who was visiting from my hometown, tickets, I figured I’d give the show the chance to prove itself. I headed into the theater last Saturday night knowing none of the music and with only my friend’s brief synopsis of the plot to go on. What followed was two and a half hours of the most disgustingly tasteless story I have had the misfortune to experience in a theater. I spent the entire first act feeling like I was actually going to be sick to my stomach, and found no real solace in the second act, which was frustratingly absent any repercussions for the title character’s reprehensible behavior.
Spoilers for the show and a trigger warning for discussion of ableism and suicide after the jump.
The plot of Dear Evan Hansen begins with a letter, unsurprisingly given the title. The eponymous Evan has been tasked by his therapist with writing pep talk letters to himself to help him visualize success: “Dear Evan Hansen, Today is going to be a great day.” However, Evan is a depressed, anxious, and deeply socially awkward teenager, and on the day the show starts, he instead ends up writing a pretty bleak letter about how things aren’t getting better and may never get better. He prints it at the school computer lab, where it’s picked up and stolen by Connor Murphy, the also-depressed brother of Evan’s crush Zoe. Shortly after this, and for presumably unrelated reasons, Connor kills himself, with Evan’s letter still in his possession.
Here’s the thing, though. Evan simply signed the letter “Sincerely, Me”, so Connor’s parents think that Evan, to whom Connor was essentially a stranger who was sometimes mean to him at school, must have been very close to their son. After all, his suicide note was addressed to Evan. When put on the spot about the letter, Evan panics and lies to them, saying that yes, they were good friends. He frantically invents a shared history between him and Connor and creates an elaborate fantasy about their interactions. Things careen wildly out of control as the school encourages Evan, Connor’s “closest friend,” to take a primary role in memorializing him, and a video of him telling a completely fake story about Connor goes viral and turns into a movement called The Connor Project. Evan becomes the face of a Kickstarter campaign to reopen a nearby orchard in Connor’s memory, because the old, abandoned orchard features heavily in his fictionalized friendship with Connor.
While he is thriving on finally having some positive attention—even catching Zoe’s eye and beginning to date her—the holes in his stories start to draw the attention of the people around him. After an act and a half of deception, Evan is finally forced into a corner and admits to the Murphys that he didn’t really know Connor at all. However, he never tells anyone else this, and neither do the Murphys, and the orchard revival is funded and goes forward.
Funnily enough, Book of Mormon is also the story of a character played by Ben Platt making a ton of shit up and not facing any consequences. This is a very specific sort of typecasting. (via pasekandpaul)
When Evan’s mom finds out what he’s done, she sings a sad/angry song by herself but never actually forces her son to face any negative consequences for his actions. In the end, Zoe actually forgives him for turning her brother’s suicide into the Evan Makes Shit Up Show, even going so far as to say his lies were the best thing that happened to her parents, whose marriage had been on the outs before Evan’s Connor stories brought them back together.
So, yeah. I imagine that you, too, are experiencing the feeling of your jaw resting on the floor. This show starts out tastelessly and never comes close to cleaning up the mess it’s made. I was particularly troubled by the show’s take on mental illness in general. The first song in the whole thing is Evan and Connor’s moms singing together about how difficult it is for them to have children with mental illnesses. This was a quick cue to me that this might not be a particularly sensitive show, as it immediately casts the focus onto the struggle that these neurotypical people are facing by being forced to deal with their sons’ sickness. This doesn’t get better. Evan is on medication for his anxiety, which he completely stops taking once he is deep in Connor Project-land. Apparently having something to focus on magically cures his anxiety, and there are no ill effects from arbitrarily deciding to cold-turkey stop taking a medicine that alters brain chemistry. In the scene where he tells his mom he’s stopped taking them, he yells at her for encouraging him to take his medicine because he feels like she’s just doing it because it’s an easy “fix” for her “broken” son. This deeply harmful view toward mental health medicine is never rebutted, and since it comes from the protagonist we’re ostensibly supposed to be rooting for, it’s implicitly supported by the story. At the same time Evan’s mother, a single mom who is trying desperately to maintain a connection with Evan while working double and triple shifts to make ends meet and taking classes to try to land a better job, is repeatedly cast as the villain for not doing enough to support her son.
Look at Evan in this nice orchard that Connor Murphy wouldn’t have given a fuck about. (via dailymail)
Then there’s Connor himself. In the brief glimpse we get of him while he’s alive, he comes off as a bully to both his classmates and his sister, the kind of person whom people befriend in the hopes he won’t shoot them when he inevitably brings a gun to school. He’s also a stereotypical portrayal of “emo” depression: long hair, attire made up of black skinny jeans and a black zip-up over a black t-shirt. However, the Connor that Evan creates is a much more sensitive, troubled soul who wishes he could relate to his family and loves apple trees. This feels almost like low-level gaslighting to me, because Zoe was clearly bullied and harassed by her brother, and now Evan is telling her that her brother really loved her but simply acted out because he didn’t know how to relate to her. We never meet the real Connor, and his real memory is eventually completely eclipsed by the fake Connor Evan invented. The story could have been considerably strengthened by including some way of giving Connor back his real voice, maybe via his sister finding a journal or some kind of private blog that showed Connor as he was, but instead his memory never scrapes off that fresh coat of perfidious paint.
Evan is a less stereotypical portrayal of depression, but we never really dig into his depression or see him attempt to learn to manage it in a healthy way. For most of the show, the Murphys’ tragedy is simply a vehicle for him to deal with issues like his absent father and his social anxiety. He starts the show with a broken arm, which he first claims happened when he was interning with Park Rangers and fell out of a tree, but later ties into his Connor story, saying it happened at the orchard and Connor helped him to the hospital. However, it eventually is strongly hinted that he broke his arm jumping out of a tree with an eye toward self-harm or suicide himself. This could have been such a strong character moment for Evan, one in which we finally see why he might desperately want to connect with and explain away the issues that someone else who attempted and succeeded at suicide experienced. But of course, because this musical is a shitshow, it careens onward without ever explicitly digging into Evan’s own mental health and recovery in a nuanced or realistic way. It’s the icing on the cake that there are never any consequences to his behavior. While a deeply depressed and anxious kid obviously shouldn’t be like, publicly shamed for his actions, this is also a matter of “tragic backstory may explain bad behavior but it doesn’t excuse it”. Someone in Evan’s life needed to show him that there were real, unavoidable repercussions to his utter betrayal of the trust of a family who’d experienced a terrible trauma, but no one ever does.
I can’t even say “Oh, the show was horrible, but at least it had a diverse cast!” because the only attempt toward diverse representation is Evan’s Black classmate Alana, the show’s lone person of color. However, she is shown to be a hyper-overachiever, a busybody, and as desperate for attention as Evan is; she becomes the villain of the show when she posts the Dear Evan Hansen “suicide note” online as a ploy to draw attention back to their floundering Kickstarter campaign. Evan also leaves her to run the whole Connor Project show for a time while he farts around coming up with more fake emails between him and Connor and hides in the dead kid’s room kissing Connor’s sister.
On top of all that, there’s also an intense no-homo vibe to the show. When Evan first starts making up the secret email chain between him and Connor with a help of a friend who knows how to make backdated emails, the friend ribs the hell out of him for how “gay” a secret email chain between two guys who liked to hang out in an orchard and talk about their lives sounds. Evan is horrified that his totally platonic fake friendship with dead Connor could sound remotely romantic, and forces his friend to edit the emails to take out anything that sounds even the slightest bit homoromantic.
The guy who plays Connor (left) is super cute and I’m frankly insulted by the implication that Evan wouldn’t want to date him. (via thewrap)
No offense to the teenagers who seem to be the main fanbase of this show, but I had a garbage critical eye when I was in high school. If you squint and stand on your head you can see that the writing team were trying to maybe tell a story about the power of social media to affect positive social change and the importance of valuing each human life??? I guess??? So that might be what’s resonating with people? But the message I got from it is: If you’re a mediocre white boy, no matter what incredibly garbage shit you do, up to and including literally exploiting and profiting off of the suicide of a stranger, it will be forgiven. There’s also the (potentially unintentional?) message that social media is powerful when it comes to strangers getting their inspiration-porn jollies from contextless, un-vetted/unsourced, one-note emotional clickbait.
That said, teenagers shouldn’t have to be on alert for problematic content in their media. Rather, it’s the responsibility of the adults writing these shows to be approximately 100% more tasteful in terms of representing these issues, and the responsibility of the other adults reviewing the show for grown-up publications to call this nonsense the fuck out rather than praising its milquetoast intended message. Irresponsibly handled stories about suicide are flooding pop culture right now, (I’m looking at S-Town and 13 Reasons Why in particular here), and a vague “it gets better”-esque message in a show otherwise centered on exploiting a suicide does nothing to combat that.
Can’t forget this peppy musical number where the imagined ghost of a suicide victim dances with the people putting words in his mouth! (via a NYT review that confusingly calls this a “gorgeous heartbreaker of a musical”)
On the upside, the night wasn’t entirely wasted. I did get to see former Glinda Jennifer Laura Thompson play Mrs. Murphy, the set design, which had social media feeds projected onto the stage, was really well integrated into the show, and I guess some of the songs were pretty. (They were composed by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, whose work on La La Land was equally tone-deaf.) But unfortunately for the show, these things were not remotely enough to rescue it from its exceedingly distasteful and problematic story. Rather than dwelling on it any longer, I’m just going to go cuddle up with this delightfully yes-homo AU Luce sent me and pretend that it’s what I saw last weekend.
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Evan Hansen
General
Full name
Nickname(s)
Gender
Age
Occupation
Relationships
Family
Dear Evan Hansen Lighting Plot
Production
Portrayed by
Ben PlattNoah Galvin
Taylor Trensch
Windows 10 search bar is white. Ben Levi Ross
Andrew Barth Feldman
Robert Markus
Mark Evan Hansen is the main character in the musical Dear Evan Hansen. He is the son of Heidi Hansen. He has social anxiety, which shapes his personality throughout the musical. He is in a total of 9 musical numbers. Evan attempts to find the acceptance and love he has been lacking in his life. On his journey to be found, he discovers the consequences of risking it all for the chance to be heard.
Character Description. Edit
Evan has brown hair and light green eyes. He wears a blue striped shirt and a pair of Khakis. In act 2, he wears a grey jacket too. He is sometimes seen wearing a black backpack. His most iconic feature is the white cast on his arm in act 1 with a signature in large capital letters that says 'CONNOR'.
About Edit
Dear Evan Hansen Plot Line
Evan is a 17-year-old outcast in his senior year in high school, with severe social anxiety and a broken arm. His only friend, Jared Kleinman, is pretty rude to him at the beginning and denies that they're even friends at all. Evan's therapist has him write some letters to himself to boost his confidence. While printing one out, Evan sees Connor Murphy, who offers to sign his cast. Connor grabs Evan's letter from the printer as a favor, and to Evan's avail, starts reading it. Connor becomes distraught at the off-putting mention of his sister, Zoe Murphy, whom Evan has a crush on. So he leaves the computer lab, taking the letter with him.
Evan finds out later that Connor killed himself, and his letter was in his back pocket. The letter is then mistaken as a suicide note. Of course, awkward ol' Evan can't deny it very well. When Connor's family invites Evan over for dinner, Jared just instructs him to 'nod and confirm,' and 'don't make shit up.' Unfortunately, Evan goes off in a huge story of how he broke his arm climbing trees with Connor.
It escalates with more lies and deceit, Evan even creating an imaginary Connor in his own mind that gives him advice. Eventually, Evan gets with Zoe, and spends like every night at the Murphys' house because his mom is gone all the time.
He also organizes The Connor Project, 'a student group dedicated to keeping Connor's memory alive' with the help of Jared and Alana Beck. But eventually, he starts neglecting it to spend more time focusing on his relationship with Zoe and the Murphys. Eventually, he admits the truth about the letter, and it's over. No more lies. Zoe, of course, breaks up with him, and he patches things up with his mom who he'd had a really rocky relationship with since Connor's suicide.
After graduating, Evan takes a year off and works at Pottery Barn to save up money for college. We see him meeting up with Zoe again, who's now a senior. They talk for a while, and we see that Evan's anxiety has /greatly/ improved. He writes himself one last letter, the ultimate resolution in which he finally accepts himself. The end.
QuotesEdit
- 'When you're falling in a forest and there's nobody around, do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?' -Evan Hansen in Waving Through A Window
- 'You will be found..' -Evan Hansen in You Will Be Found
- 'Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, and here's why: because today, at least you're you, and that's enough.' -Evan Hansen in Finale
- 'I've learned to slam on the brake, before I even turn the key. Before I make the mistake, before I lead with the worst of me.' -Evan Hansen in Words Fail and Waving Through A Window
- 'I'm sending pictures of the most amazing trees! You'll be obsessed with all my forest expertise!' -Evan Hansen in Sincerely, Me.
- 'I'M NOT HYPERVENTILATING!!' -Evan Hansen in 'Sincerely, Me'.
- 'I love jazz, well not all jazz, but definitely like jazz band jazz, that's so weird I'm sorry.' Evan Hansen in Waving Through A Window, talking to his crush, Zoe Murphy.
- 'But not because we're gay.'- Evan Hansen singing to psuedo-Connor in Sincerely, Me.
Trivia Edit
- Evan Hansen said that he broke his arm falling off of a tree.
- Later it's revealed that he did not, in fact, fall, but he let go.
- Evan Hansen's only friend at the beginning is Jared Kleinman.
- Evan Hansen has a crush on and ends up dating (and breaking up with) Zoe.
- They later got together in You Will Be Found.
- Evan Hansen sees a therapist about every week.
- The therapist has him write letters to himself to boost his confidence.
- Evan lives alone with his mother, Heidi Hansen, because his father moved away when he was seven.
- Evan was the co-president of The Connor Project with Alana Beck.
- He works at Pottery Barn at the end of the show.
- He has severe anxiety and takes medication to help keep it under control.
- He has half-siblings in Colorado.
- His step-mother is a cocktail waitress.
Dear Evan Hansen Ending Explained
Sources Edit
[Best Moments in Dear Evan Hansen according to the cast]
[Evan Hansen|Dear Evan Hansen Wikipedia article]
Songs Evan Hansen Is Featured In Edit
'Anybody Have a Map?'
In this song, Evan's mom, Heidi, expresses her frustration in not being able to connect with Evan right.
'Waving Through a Window'
After being shoved by Connor, Evan ponders if this is just his destiny; to never be noticed, and to not matter for the rest of his life.
'For Forever'
Evan quickly fabricates a story of how he and Connor were best friends, and that he broke his arm from falling out of a tree while out with Connor.
'Sincerely, Me'
Evan enlists Jared's help in creating fake, backdated emails between Connor and him, but Jared doesn't really take it that seriously and makes a lot of jokes.
'If I Could Tell Her'
Evan starts telling Zoe all the things that he's always liked about her, but lies and says that Connor was the one who'd said all of those things.
'Disappear'
Evan imagines Connor Murphy there, who tells him that no one should be forgotten like Connor was. This inspires Evan to create the Connor Project, a big group to make sure that Connor's memory stays alive, and everyone else's too.
'You Will Be Found'
At an assembly for the Connor Project, Evan gives a speech about how no matter what, you will be found. Someone puts a video of this online, and it quickly goes viral, causing the Connor Project to blow up in popularity.
'To Break In a Glove'
Larry Murphy, Connor's dad, offers Evan one of Connor's old baseball gloves, and teaches him how to break it in for use. They bond, like, a LOT from it.
'Only Us'
Zoe decides that she doesn't want Evan's and her relationship to just be about Connor, but about them.
'Good For You'
Heidi tells Evan off for having been lying to her about basically everything for months. Alana starts noticing a bunch of inconsistencies within the emails supposedly written between Connor and Evan, and suspects that it's all fake. And Jared's mostly heartbroken that Evan completely left him behind. So they all have this big power anthem that makes Evan guilty as hecc.
'Words Fail'
Evan finally tells the truth about everything, and doesn't know how to explain his thought process during the situation. His fault for lying in the first place :
'Finale'
Evan's finally happy with himself, a year later. He writes himself one final letter, which basically says 'Hey, I don't suck!' The end.
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