Dear Evan Hansen
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
Winner of the 2017 Tony Award for Best Musical “Dear Evan Hansen lodges in your head long after you’ve seen it or heard it or read it. It feels like a pure expression from young writers at a crossroad of coming to terms with who they are and what they want to say about the world. Its honesty and truths haunt and ultimately open us up to ask the same question, no matter what our age or crossroad: What are the lies we tell ourselves?” –James Lapine (from the Foreword) A letter that was never meant to be seen, a lie that was never meant to be told, a life he never dreamed could be his. Evan Hansen is about to get the one thing he’s always wanted: a chance to belong. Deeply personal and profoundly universal, Dear Evan Hansen is a groundbreaking American musical about truth, fiction, and the price we’re willing to pay for the possibility to connect. *This publication includes the book and lyrics to the musical, as well as a foreword by James Lapine. Please note that it does not include the musical score.* Steven Levenson is the book writer for Dear Evan Hansen. His plays include If I Forget, The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, Core Values, The Language of Trees, and Seven Minutes in Heaven. A graduate of Brown University, he served for three seasons as a writer and producer on Showtime’s Master of Sex. Benj Pasek & Justin Paul are the song-writing team behind Dear Evan Hansen. Previous musicals include A Christmas Story: The Musical, Dogfight, James and the Giant Peach, and Edges. Their film projects include La La Land (for which they won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “City of Stars,” with composer Justin Hurwitz), Trolls, Snow White, and The Greatest Showman. Their television credits include The Flash, Smash, and Johnny and the Sprites. Both are graduates of the University of Michigan Musical Theatre Program and members of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.
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I listened to the soundtrack of the Broadway musical this afternoon, and it helped me connect with the book better...but I shouldn't have needed to do that.
Maybe it's because I'm middle-aged? Or was a therapist? I saw this story from the point of view of a child's entire personhood and agency being hijacked, and it weirded me out so much it was hard to go along with the ride. But when I listened to the same story through song, I could hear, in the lyrics of Evans apology (which was not truly in the book) how Evan got swept in this thing that was bigger than he was and it gave him what he didn't have—a nuclear family and the girlfriend he assumed he could never get on his own. It's wasn't his motive, but it was an after affect. That plot point was very clear in the musical but not in the book.
Plus the added storytelling device of the ghost in the novel was not a good choice at all, in my opinion—I found it jarring. The reader could have learned the same details in a more fluid fashion.
The final, painful truth about Evan's fall from the tree—that it was accidentally on purpose—was stepped on in the novel, to used stage language. I read it and kept going and then had to pause to realize what I had read.
Finally, I really felt like the fact that Miguel and Connor were dating was hidden at the end from Zoe—and by extension, her parents—as a final gift. In this day and age? Really? Evan is supposedly coming clean completely, and...that's how it ended? No bueno.
Musical, from only hearing it: 4
Book: 3, unless that ending...? Can't check, because I have returned it to the library.
