Suburban teenagers were abundantly represented at pretty packed house for “Dear Evan Hansen” on Sunday afternoon in Aurora, a reminder of the popularity of this famously emotional musical by Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul about the high school senior whose mental health issues lead him to propagate an elaborate scheme of high-stakes lies that ends up trapping him in his own deceit.
“Dear Evan Hansen,” which bowed on Broadway in 2016, famously starring Ben Platt, has not been seen in Chicago since the last stop of the national tour in 2022, and with this kind of show, new kids age into the market. Plus, the Paramount Theatre in Aurora offers Broadway levels of spectacle and performance at a very different price point.
Those rows of teens and parents were all there, I’m sure, for the title. Fair enough. But discriminating Chicago-area musical-goers would be well advised to look for the name of the director, Jessica Fisch, when making their choices, especially if the theater involves a schlep.
“Dear Evan Hansen” is superbly wrought here. And it continues Fisch’s remarkable run of shows filled with fresh ideas, including “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” and “Catch Me If You Can” at the Marriott Theatre; I had a conversation with the composer-lyricist Marc Shaiman and he couldn’t stop talking about how Fisch had solved so many of the past structural problems of “Catch Me.”
So she does again with the Paramount’s “Dear Evan Hansen,” and she demonstrably does so through collaboration.
Driving out, I was intrigued to see how Fisch would handle the dated aspects of “Dear Evan Hansen,” a show that was once ahead of its time when it came to sounding an alarm about social media amplifying the behavior of troubled teens, but uses that era’s nomenclature of blogs and texts. In the original production, it’s Facebook posts, not Instagram or TikTok, that form the backdrop. Fisch is stuck with the same book and schemata of the show, of course, but with her designers (most notably, projections designer Anthony Churchill and set designer Andrew Boyce) she subtly updates all of that in a way that better reflects today’s video-driven, teen-hungry technology.
Superfans of this show (you know who you are) really should check out this staging, not least for the eye-poppingly beautiful final orchard scene. But there’s also a most excellent lead performance from Cody Combs in the title role.
I’ve never seen Combs before; his resume says he is from Kentucky and, to be honest, has not done much of anything at this level before, but his Evan is very much his own and far more rooted in pain than I have seen before. That solves another of the show’s central problems — its demand that we empathize with a fabulist who cares not for the harm he inflicts on his community. In order for that to work — and musicals always demand that we care about the name on the marquee, imperfect as they may be — you have to believe that Evan is both good at heart and, being neuroatypical, unable to stop himself once the aggressive algorithms oppress him.
That’s exactly what Combs makes you feel here, allowing the parents in the show, beautifully played by Bri Sudia, Devin DeSantis and Megan McGinnis (making a rare area appearance), to paint a collective picture of impotence, really, not just in the face of Evan’s anxiety but the evils of Big Tech. None of that was as clear in the original production. How could it have been? We know a lot more now about this stuff now than we did in 2016.
Finally, Fisch just somehow always seems to manage to cast in such a way that high-quality singing accompanies truthful and vulnerable acting. You see only the principals on stage although the understudies are singing in the wings: the harmonic work on famed anthemic numbers like “You Will Be Found” and “For Forever” is especially lush and, although partially pre-recorded, indicative of especially excellent craft from musical director Kory Danielson and sound designer Adam Rosenthal.
How great that kids in the western ‘burbs, especially, have such affordable access to theater of this quality. No better date night or road trip.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Dear Evan Hansen” (4 stars)
When: Through March 22
Where: Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $47-$121 at 630-896-6666 and paramountaurora.com
