Jessica E. Sherman News

If you have never seen Broadway smash hit, DEAR EVAN HANSEN, you're in for an emotional roller coaster wrapped up in a multimedia work of art.

DEAR EVAN HANSEN on tour launched last year in Denver and is currently on tour across America! What are critics saying about the show in different cities across the country? Check out all the reviews for the hit musical below from tour stops in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Boston, Washington, DC and more!

Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day and here's why: you're in New Orleans now. After the incident with the Hard Rock Hotel closed down the Saenger Theatre, New Orleans theatergoers were concerned about the state of the upcoming season. With a relocation to the Mahalia Jackson theater, Dear Evan Hansen made it to the Crescent City after all, and it is not a show you will want to miss.

Dear New Orleans, November 5 is going to be a good day and here's why... the Tony Award Winning musical DEAR EVAN HANSEN with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, The Greatest Showman) opens at The Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts.  Sincerely, me.

Dear Evan Hansen was the winner of six 2017 Tony awards including Best Musical and Best Performance by an actor. The first national tour of a Dear Evan Hansen has set up shop at the Kansas City Music Hall for a one week run.

'Wow. I knew the soundtrack, but was not expecting that!' Such was the repeated refrain that echoed throughout the theater lobby as gobsmacked Memphians filed out of Dear Evan Hansen, the first production of the 2019-2020 Broadway season at the Orpheum. Since its celebrated premiere on the Great White Way in 2016, the Tony Award winning Best Musical's original cast album, featuring music and lyrics by today's 'it' collaborators with the Midas touch, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, has seemingly transcended those who self-identify as musical theater lovers. Rather, its contemporary, pop infused tracks have built appeal across a broad array of audiences, with many - particularly millennials - able to sing or at least hum them on command. For that, tremendous credit is owed to Ben Platt of Pitch Perfect fame, who originated the role of Even Hansen on Broadway, winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in the process.

A great story, well told, could and should move the audience into feeling something. Whether it's empathy for the protagonist's plight, revulsion at the villain's crimes, or laughing at a clown's antics, if you don't come away from a tale without feeling something, then the author/actors/director/etc. have failed their audience.

Dear Evan Hansen is the oh so rare example of a truly original musical. In a world where musicals based on movies are becoming the rule and not the exception, it's refreshing and almost unheard of for a completely original musical to succeed as it has. The show had a long gestation period that included workshops and pre-Broadway tryouts, but when it finally made it to Broadway in late 2016, the buzz surrounding it made it a hit before it even opened. It would go on to win a slew of awards including Best Musical at that year's Tonys, and now as the tour is entering it's second year on the road, Louisville is finally getting a taste of this runaway hit with a week long run at the Kentucky Center.