Review: Dear Evan Hansen at the Lyceum, Sheffield

Like Adolescence – the talked-about TV show of the season – this modern musical tackles the subjects that have had the nation gripped: growing up a boy in the high school jungle, teens seeking belonging in a landscape of digital disconnect, family relationships versus the pull of the online world, and social media’s power to both isolate and unite.

Where there was little to laugh at, however, in Stephen Graham’s gritty drama, the musical -two-thirds of its way through its first UK tour – manages to blend warmth, joy and humour in with the tragedy and torment.

The subject matter may centre on sobering issues of suicide, grief and mental ill health, but the show is uplifting. The songs, by the writing duo who also penned the numbers for The Greatest Showman and La La Land, represent some of the best new music in theatre for years.

The musical revolves around Evan, a painfully awkward American high school nobody, crippled by anxiety and depression, who finds himself in the eye of a social media storm after a misunderstanding leads everyone to believe he was secret best friends with Connor, a troubled classmate who took his own life.

Too inept to set them straight, and with every lie he subsequently weaves, Evan finds his high school status snowball from zero to unlikely hero – and he begins to form connections with a family life he never had, and the girlfriend he always wanted.

If you’ve seen the 2021 movie version of the 2015 play, starring Ben Platt reprising on screen the stage role he originated on Broadway, you might wonder if anyone else can adequately fill Evan’s shoes.

But Scots actor Ryan Kopel is perfectly cast as Evan. His breathtaking vocal range – from baritone to falsetto and back again – is matched by his emotional range. With every self-conscious twist of his clammy fingers, each nervy piece of talk-too-much dialogue (in a perfect US accent), every tortured apologetic embarrassment at simply being alive, he portrays the agonies of being Evan to perfection. His delivery of songs Waving Through a Window, and Words Fail especially, is heart-rending.

It was a real-life student tragedy at lyricist Benj Pasek’s own Philadelphia high school that inspired the story which has gone on to win multiple Tony, Grammy and Olivier awards.

“After his death people claimed friendship, and joined a grief parade,” remembers Pasek.

As they were writing the show, the creators began to see that was not an isolated incident.

“Whenever something tragic would happen, there was this outpouring online – of people making it about themselves,” said scriptwriter Steven Levenson.

The theme is represented in some simple stage scenery by set designer Morgan Large: sliding glass panels that swipe left and right, transparent yet blurred, that create a semi-opaque barrier between life as viewed through a smartphone screen and the real world.

Phone notifications ping, online messages chatter, and video screens are used to clever effect, while the stage is framed by fragmented mirrors. Everywhere the flawed characters’ actions are reflected back at them like social media’s ever-present merciless glare.

The whole cast is first rate. Alice Fearn as Evan’s mum conveys not just the struggles of a single mum doing her best but also the pragmatic realities of exasperated parenting. Her harmonies with Helen Anker as Connor’s mum Cynthia in opening song Anybody Have a Map? set the tone for the standard to come.

Lauren Conroy is captivating as Connor’s sister Zoe. Repeatedly, as her facial expressions paint emotions more vividly than words, you forget she is acting, and find yourself watching her even in scenes where her character is not the focus.

This coming-of-age Broadway show – a love/hate letter to growing up – might be a decade old this summer, but it feels like the perfectly prescient and profound piece of contemporary theatre to continue the conversation Adolescence started.

• Dear Evan Hansen is at Lyceum until Saturday, April 12