“Dear Evan Hansen” has no flashy dance numbers or eleven o’clock showstopper. Most scenes take place in the quiet of a high schooler’s bedroom, on the couch of a family room or entirely virtually, with kids positioned at their laptops on stage while a dialogue plays out via email.
Nevertheless, Concord High School thespians were floored to hear it would be the spring musical this year.
“Ever since I was in sixth grade, I’ve been into this show,” said sophomore Evan Wicks.
Years ago, Wicks got a copy of the show’s book as a Christmas gift from a friend. He and his mom have sung songs from the cast album in the car. Now, as Concord performs the hit show on May 14, 15 and 16, he’ll assume the titular role of Evan Hansen.
“When I heard that this was the musical, I was ecstatic,” he said.
The show follows an anxious teen without many friends who gets caught up in a lie after a classmate dies by suicide, weaving together hard conversations about loneliness, personal accountability, single-parenthood, grief and high school dynamics in a digital world. It premiered on Broadway in 2016 and was a fast smash, sweeping the best musical, score and actor Tonys in 2017 and debuting as an adapted film in 2021.
Wicks’ castmates said they too grew up loving the show. As digital natives who came of age amid growing concerns about youth isolation and mental health, especially during the pandemic, the show belongs to them in ways that more traditional musicals do not.
Beyond students’ connection to the show, there’s buzz: According to Director Clint Klose, CHS will be the first theater company, amateur or professional, to perform Dear Evan Hansen in the state of New Hampshire.
The licensing for non-professional performances was released in December, and Klose secured the first permissions to put on the show in the state.
It’s a fitting honor for him. The musical will be his final after 15 years as the drama director at Concord High and 35 years teaching in Concord Schools. In that time, he noted, he’s never repeated a show.
“It’s sort of like he’s graduating with us,” said senior Maggie Hall.
Students are also using “Dear Evan Hansen’s” heavy themes about belonging, mental health struggles and suicidality as a point of advocacy for mental healthcare and reducing stigma around mental illness in the community. The drama club has partnered with the state chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which will set up a station at the show’s performances with information and resources, as will the high school’s mental health awareness club.
The show also dovetails with Holly Keenan and Maddie Short’s recent self-written and self-directed show “Cabin Thoughts,” which showed downtown at the end of April. The duo play opposite one another in the musical as Cynthia Murphy and Heidi Hansen.
There some aspects of their characters’ lives that these actors can relate to. Others require digging deeper.
Junior Will Fogg plays Connor Murphy, a highschooler who – off stage – takes his own life early in the story. Connor says very few lines, and the fulcrum of the plot becomes how little classmates and even his own family knew about his struggles.
For Fogg, becoming Connor has meant crafting that unspoken backstory and mindset from the breadcrumbs in the script.
“I’ve done a lot of research on what mental health struggles look like, what suicidal thoughts look like,” he said. It wasn’t an easy thought exercise, he continued, “but I think that if we do our jobs correctly, we can help fill the audience with that knowledge. These things are happening. They’re real. This is how they make you feel. Let’s talk about them. Let’s try and reduce stigma around them.”
For Wicks, the approach to his character was delicate in a different way: Evan’s hardest moments are laid bare on stage. Wicks wants to perform those struggles authentically, but sensitively. He didn’t want to put on a caricature.
“He has a lot of tics. He’s doing a lot with his eyes, or his hands or the way he says things,” Wicks said. “Obviously I don’t want to make it seem like I’m making fun of people that have anxiety and depression and the tics that this character has. So, making sure that I’m doing the character justice was what I wanted to work on the most.”
For Maddie Short, who plays Evan’s mother, being on the other side of a parent-teen relationship has meant exploring a different kind of emotional depth.
“It’s hard to just walk on stage and be like, now it’s time to cry, or now it’s time to yell at Evan,” she said. “Even though we’re uncomfortable, it still feels fulfilling. And maybe that discomfort isn’t such a bad thing.”
Students noted that the script brings moments of comedy and, in the end, a message of hope. There’s no shortage of laughably awkward teenage interactions or raunchy turns of phrase. At the same time, the show’s message and tagline, “you will be found,” brings higher stakes to the performance for these actors than just hitting the notes and remembering the lines.
“The greatest asset that an actor can have is the ability to tell an authentic story,” Klose said. “You never know, anyone in the audience, what kind of day, what kind of life, what kind of crap they’re going through. You may change someone’s life through your performance. So you better go out and nail it.”
