Theater Review: Dear Evan Hansen Moves Uptown, and Gains Something Indefinable
10 / 10
The big problem in writing great musicals is not the difficulty of writing great songs. The big problem is that the songs, great or not, are cannibals, picking the stories clean and leaving a pile of bones. It's a zero-sum system. In musical dramas the problem is even worse, as innumerable failed adaptations of huge 18th-century novels have proved. (They often seem like Cliffs Notes of Cliffs Notes.) But when a musical drama clicks, an amazing fusion event occurs: The songs and the story enlarge each other in the process of becoming inseparable. Think of Sweeney Todd or, more intimately, Fun Home. And now add to the list Dear Evan Hansen, which opened tonight in a production beautifully directed by Michael Greif. I called the Off Broadway production at Second Stage this May 'the feel-anxious musical of the season.' But it is even better on Broadway, so fine in its craft and rich its gathering of themes that, like the best works of any genre, it rewards being seen again - and again.
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