Broadway Beat

“And when you’re broken on the ground you will be found”- ‘Dear Evan Hansen’

Dear Evan Hansen the Tony, Grammy, and Olivier award winning Broadway musical originally released in 2015 is about, high schooler Evan Hansen, who is used to living in the darkness and is searching and wishing for those who understand him and make him feel like he truly belongs, especially while living in the wicked, brutal world shown on social media, which runs the life of an average high schooler. 

The musical Dear Evan Hansen originally starred Ben Platt. The character he played, Evan Hansen, has a social anxiety disorder. Dear Evan Hansen is about Evan who suffers from a social anxiety disorder and has a hard time making friends but when one of his fellow students Conner Murphy kills himself everybody thinks he and Conner were best friends including Conner's family. Evan goes along with it to get closer to their family because he never had a family who loved him the way Conner’s family loves him. Evan however goes too far and can’t let the family find out he was lying. 

The movie Dear Evan Hansen is not even half as good as the play. I felt as if the connection was lost somewhere while making the movie and you don’t get the same feeling after, it just falls flat. My other big problem with the movie is that the actors don’t look like high school students. Ben Platt who plays high school student Evan Hansen is 28 years old, and no longer looks or sounds like a 16 year old. The other thing about Ben Platt is that he over acts, and makes all his motions bigger than life, which when you are on a stage is important so everyone can see you, but when you have a camera right up in your face it looks like you're going crazy. Another thing the movie did which I found was weird was take out a bunch of songs from the musical such as “Anybody have a Map” , “Disappear”, “To break in a glove”, and “Good for you” I don’t know if they took the songs out because the movie was too long, but I find “Disappear” way more moving than the new song they added, “The Anonymous Ones”.  

At its core however the musical sends an extremely inspirational message that makes your day and the cast is super talented. All the songs you could listen to all day without getting bored. The musical is beloved by many (myself included) and is extremely inspirational and beautifully done with heartwarming lyrics like “Even when the dark comes crashing through, when you need a friend to carry you, when you’re broken on the ground, you will be found.” The musical contains some really great songs. Some of my favorites are “Waving Through a Window” and  “Sincerely me”. Critics gave Dear Evan Hansen the musical a 94.1%. 

    While the movie does not compare to seeing the live show, (Rotten Tomatoes gave a rating of 30% by critics, 88 by audiences) some people may not feel like going to live shows right now for many reasons. The new movie was recently released and can be streamed on Prime Video, iTunes, Vudu, and Google Play.