Interview: Mickey White Brings a Starry DEAR EVAN HANSEN to Hingham

Mickey White is about to realize one of his career dreams – playing the title role in “Dear Evan Hansen,” the 2016 Tony Award winner for Best Musical.

“I’ve wanted to do this show and play this role for several years now. I love the way the story taps into social anxiety and the feelings of being alone that some young people experience,” explained White by telephone recently from his Duxbury home. “I was in callbacks for Evan five times during its six-year run on Broadway, but I just never landed it.”

While White waited for his chance at Evan, he kept one song from the show close at heart. “I’ve been singing ‘Waving Through the Window’ – which has Evan contemplating whether his destiny is always to be ignored – every chance I get,” he says.

A producer as well as a performer, White is presenting and starring in “Dear Evan Hansen” – with a cast including Tony Award nominee Orfeh (“Legally Blonde: The Musical”) and film and television actress Jill Whelan (“The Love Boat,” “Airplane!”) – as the inaugural mainstage production of Harbour Lights Theatre, where he serves as artistic director, at Carr Amphitheater on the Hingham campus of the South Shore Conservatory, August 6 through 9. The show, with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and book by Steven Levenson, tells the tale of social anxiety-ridden high school senior Evan Hansen, who invents a key role for himself in a tragedy in which he had no real part.

Under the direction of Tony Award nominee Adam Pascal (“Rent”), the Harbour Lights Theatre mounting features not only White as Evan, Orfeh as his mother Heidi Hansen, and Whelan as Cynthia Murphy, but also Victoria “Tory” Vagasy (“America’s Got Talent” season 16 finalist) as Zoe Murphy, Dillon Klena (“Jagged Little Pill” North American tour) as Connor Murphy, James Moye (Broadway’s “Dear Evan Hansen”) as Larry Murphy, Chris Medlin (Broadway’s “Mean Girls” and “Diana: The Musical”) as Jared Kleinman, and Kayla Louison as Alana Beck.

White first met Pascal while attending a 2024 performance of “Drag: The Musical” off-Broadway at New World Stages in which Pascal had replaced Needham native Joey McIntyre. During a post-show conversation, Pascal – best known as a performer in shows like “Aida” and “Something Rotten!” – mentioned to White that he was interested in directing. Before long, he signed on to direct “Dear Evan Hansen” for Harbour Lights.

By telephone recently from Hull, Whelan said the chance to be directed by Pascal and to share a stage with Orfeh were the main reasons that she decided to spend part of her summer on the South Shore.

“What appealed to me about doing ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ was that I’d be working with Orfeh and Adam. When I heard that they were both attached to the project, I said I don’t really care where it’s happening, I just want to be a part of it,” explained Whelan. “I would have jumped through fire hoops to work with them both. Broadway has always been on my bucket list, and they’re Broadway legends. When an opportunity like this comes along, you don’t say no. And Cynthia Murphy, who loses her son Connor to suicide, is a great role to play, too. I never leave the stage without crying because she affects me so much.”

To listen to Orfeh – who has appeared on Broadway in “Footloose,” “Saturday Night Fever,” “Chicago,” and “Pretty Woman: The Musical” – her newfound friendship with Whelan is a mutual admiration society.

“I wanted very much to work with my longtime friend Adam, and my new best friend Jill. She’s just a great gal so when this came along, I thought, oh, this could be interesting. It’s like summer camp, you know? We’re in this beautiful place, in this beautiful outdoor venue. It’s very blink-and-you-miss-it, too, because it’s only five performances,” says the New York-born Orfeh. “And when Adam Pascal asks you to do something, you say, okay, sure, if it’s in my schedule, I’ll do it. And then suddenly you’re bunking with your friend Jill, working on the show with her, Mickey, and Adam, and having a lot more fun than you ever expected.”

Orfeh may be enjoying her life, but she knows it’s a different story for her character.

“Heidi Hansen is a very complicated character and, as a performer, I’m intrigued by that. She’s not an easy character to love, however, at least not for me. Adam, Jill, Mickey, and I had a conversation about Heidi the other day, and I pointed out that I’ve been very, very lucky in my career to have played characters that are highly lovable. It’s easy to get into the skin of that kind of character, but Heidi’s much more complex, and you’ve got to work to find her redeeming qualities – at least I do as the person portraying her,” says Orfeh.

When she’s not in a book show, Orfeh can often be found on the concert stage where she expects she will soon be adding the Heidi Hansen number “Good for You” to her set list.

“The score for this show is phenomenal from start to finish. Every song is a banger, but ‘Good for You’ is probably my favorite. It’s an epiphany after a big dinner scene when all the parents are together, and Heidi finds out that Evan has been spending literally 90 percent of his time over at the Murphys’, Connor’s parents’ house. Heidi had no idea, and the song springs from that moment when she realizes that the Murphys have been doing Evan’s bidding and his two best friends and his own mother had no idea what was going on, or did and were complicit. If I may say, ‘Good for You’ is the show’s big ‘f*ck you’ song.”

Whelan may not have performed that kind of number but she did musical theater as a child performer, including a regional production of “The King & I.” The Oakland, California, native was also set to star as the title character in the first national tour of “Annie,” which featured character actress Jane Connell as Miss Hannigan. Whelan’s appearance in an M&Ms commercial caught the eye of a television casting director for producer Aaron Spelling, however, and she ended up passing on “Annie” for a role in the family comedy “Friends,” which aired on ABC-TV in the spring of 1979. The series had a much briefer run than the same-named one on NBC-TV years later, but it did lead Spelling to cast Whelan as Vicki Stubing, daughter of Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin MacLeod), on ABC-TV’s “The Love Boat.”

Whelan helped welcome many Golden Era movie stars including Janet Gaynor, Lillian Gish, Joan Fontaine, Gene Kelly, Don Ameche, June Allyson, Dana Andrews, Anne Baxter, and Debbie Reynolds to the Pacific Princess. And she was on hand for guest appearances by Broadway legends like Ethel Merman and Carol Channing, who famously appeared in a production number with Ann Miller and Della Reese set in the Acapulco Lounge. The big-name guest stars were all memorable, according to Whelan, but she says working with one particular couple was an experience like no other.

“The episode with Ginger Rogers as a faded movie queen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., as a poison-penned film critic who covered her career is one of my favorites. Ginger Rogers was so beautiful, and I found Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. to be quite dashing. Getting the opportunity to join them in a dance number was truly amazing,” recalls Whelan, who currently co-hosts “The Love Boat Podcast: Exciting and New” with former castmates Ted Lange (Isaac) and Fred Grandy (Gopher).

Local audiences may remember White – who moved in seventh grade from Wrentham to Duxbury with his parents, Chris and Paula White, and his younger sisters, Rylee and Raegan, graduated from Duxbury High School in 2015, and earned his BFA in musical theater from Boston Conservatory at Berklee in 2019 – from his tour debut in “Hairspray,” which stopped at Boston’s Citizens Opera House in October 2022, where he played Sketch and understudied the roles of Link Larkin and Corny Collins.

But White is also known to South Shore audiences for his frequent Halloween week appearances in the Disneyesque “Mickey White’s Spooktacular: A Monster Musical,” which he presented at Duxbury’s Ellison Center for the Arts in 2025, and he says some of his greatest memories come from his appearances in Disney Cruise Lines productions of “Believe,” “Aladdin,” and “Frozen.”

“I have great respect for Walt Disney Imagineering and I might like to work there one day. I love Disney. It inspires a lot of what I do.”

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