Theater Review: 'Dear Evan Hansen' Tour at Waterbury's Palace Theater

Review by Nancy Sasso Janis

The Crossroads Live tour of Dear Evan Hansen is at Waterbury’s Palace Theater this weekend. The Tony Award-winning Best Musical includes the beautiful music by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and a book by Steven Levenson. Alex Lacamoire, of “Hamilton” fame, provided music supervision, orchestrations and additional arrangements.

The direction for the tour was recreated by Danny Sharron and Mark Myars and the choreography recreated by Mark Myars.

This is the story of Evan Hansen, a high school senior with severe social anxiety and depression who gets caught up in a lie surrounding the suicide of a classmate and then inadvertently creates an important role in the tragedy. This is an important story that explores our social-media influences lives that appeals to both teens and adults.

The cast has been whittled down to the essential characters with no ensemble, although there are understudies ready to step in. Every performer brings authenticity to their strongly-drawn character.

Michael Fabisch, a Minnesota born actor/singer, stars as the gawky Evan Hansen, with a wonderful singing voice for the songs that require a wide musical range. Michael Perez performs the role at select performances and also understudies the role of Connor.

Alex Pharo gives a strong performance in the role of the sullen stoner Connor Murphy in his national tour debut, equally matched by Hatty Ryan King as his sister Zoe Murphy (“Only Us”) in her national tour debut.

Bre Cade plays Evan’s mother Heidi, an overworked nurse’s aide studying to be a paralegal, with an achingly beautiful performance. She is one of the moms that open the show with the highly choreographed movement in “Anybody Have a Map.” Jeff Brooks (“A Bronx Tale” tour) brings the angst to the role of Connor’s father, Larry Murphy (“To Break in a Glove”) and Caitlin Sams plays the role of the bereaved mother Cynthia Murphy.

Makena Jackson is a delight as earnest student Alana Beck, a “close acquaintance” of Connor. In his professional debut, Gabriel Vernon Nunag plays another student Jared Kleinman, a sarcastic friend in name only of Connor who helps him backdate some emails.

The scenic design by David Korins soaks up the busy, high-tech projections designed by Peter Nigrini, one of Broadway’s pioneering projection designers. There were some technical difficulties at the opening performance with one of the tall sliding screens that required the performance to “hold.” The stage manager directed the actors to leave the stage so that the stage crew could get the set piece back on track relatively quickly.

Michael Hopewell is the music director of the tour. Hopewell conducts the tight group of musicians in the pit while playing the keys, with violinist Amanda Nix as concertmaster. They beautifully accompany the often quiet musical numbers that include “Waving Through a Window,” “For Forever,” “You Will Be Found,” and the beautiful “Requiem.” Some of the musical lines evoke another musical about mental illness, Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt’s “Next to Normal.”

The costume design by Emily Rebholz is strongly contemporary and contains the striped blue and white shirt and arm cast. Lighting design by Japhy Weideman (“Shucked”) is stunning at some points, with an inspiring final scene due to the lighting. Sound designer Nevin Steinberg functioned well.

There is some profanity in the script, and mention of suicide. The show is performed with one intermission, but with the pause in the first act ran almost three hours. There are a few remaining tickets for the final performances on Saturday at 2 pm and 8 pm and on Sunday at 1pm available at palacetheaterct.org.

Palace Theater CEO Frank Tavera announced the shows that will be part of next season’s Broadway Series. “Austen's Pride: A New Musical of Pride and Prejudice” will open the season, followed by “Tina The Musical,” “Clue,” “The Music Man” (touring for the first time in 20 years) and one more title to be announced.

Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade