Tag: Steven Levenson

There’s much to like about Dear Evan Hansen at the Noël Coward Theatre, not least a brilliant lead performance from Sam Tutty

“Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?”

After seeing Dear Evan Hansen, you realise that its title can be taken two ways. It’s the salutation on a letter that precipitates a world of trouble for the awkward teenager and those around him as per Steven Levenson’s effectively contemporary book. But it also ultimately emerges as an affectionate form of address, troublingly so as the show latterly pulls its punches around some of the harder-hitting topics that it raises.

High-school senior Evan’s life is crippled by social anxiety. His hard-working single mum barely has time for him, he’s got no mates to speak of, and his therapist keeps setting him homework. Then when one of his classmates Connor Murphy dies by suicide, a chink of light unexpectedly cracks through his depression, as an unlikely chain of events leads him to claiming that they were best friends in order to emotionally support the grieving family. Continue reading “Review: Dear Evan Hansen, Noël Coward Theatre”