Vol. 1, Issue No. 4: Mom, 'Dear Evan Hansen', and me
"When it all feels so big, 'til it all feels so small."
My introduction to Dear Evan Hansen came in the passenger seat of my high school girlfriend’s car. This was a few months after the musical had premiered on Broadway, but before anyone not in the same tax bracket as Nicole Kidman or Anna Wintour could actually see it. If I remember correctly, just one song had a cast recording released during the early stages of the show’s run: “Waving Through a Window,” Evan Hansen’s “I want” song, as it’s come to be known. It’s a ballad and a showstopper, but it has just the right dose of fist-pumping, foot-tapping vigor to fit as a show’s second tune, the one that introduces a character and the intricacies of his mind. Were it to come at the end of Act I, no one would bat an eye; having it come so early in the show is disarming but memorable.
So, we’re driving to Starbucks, or to a high school soccer game, or to see a movie… I can’t remember. But I remember hearing the song. I remember her excitement over the show’s existence, and I remember my paralysis as the song took over any other emotion I was feeling at the time. She could have hydroplaned the car directly into a lake and I wouldn’t have realized, too enthralled by Ben Platt’s vibrato to even notice I was drowning.
I’ve learned to slam on the brake… Before I even turn the key.
I heard that. I still hear that.
So, off I went, after that car ride to get Mexican food or to rob a bank or whatever it was we did that day, into an obsession. I tend to hyperfixate; DEH became the next fixation in 2016’s long lineage of them. To summarize, the show is about a high schooler addled by severe depression and social anxiety who receives an assignment from his therapist: writing letters to himself. “Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, and here’s why,” they formulaically begin. An outcast classmate of Evan’s, Connor Murphy, finds a letter Evan wrote to himself in the library printer, takes it, dies by suicide, and is found with the note. Connor’s parents, naturally, assume that Evan and Connor were close; why else would Connor have written a note to Evan prior to committing suicide? Though he briefly attempts to skirt the assumption, Evan embroils himself in a never-ending lie in part to help the Murphys cope, but also to hopefully grow closer to Connor’s sister, Zoe, on whom he has a crush. The lie inflates; Evan becomes a viral inspiration and social media celebrity; lives spiral. It’s a lot. It makes for an incredibly gripping musical.
I memorized the words of every single song before I ever even thought to look at ticket prices, before I ever assumed it would be a possibility for me to see the show before Platt exited stage right for the final time. I would perform the tunes, whether solo numbers or trips, alone in my bedroom, or my car, or in the shower. I slipped one time while trying to properly pull off the steps associated with the upbeat trio, “Sincerely, Me”. When asked from beyond the bathroom door if everything was alright, I’m sure I blamed it on a shampoo bottle tumbling out of my hands and creating the bang.
No, I never partook in musical theater in high school, but that never stopped me from behaving as though I was acting in a production whenever the opportunity presented itself. Eventually, the aforementioned high school girlfriend — who was engrained in theater culture in school, often nabbed lead parts in the musicals, and had (has) a far better voice than I’d (I’ll) ever procure — grew tired of my belting, wishing I’d just move on to, oh, In Transit or Come From Away, just to give everyone a break. I couldn’t; I wasn’t as affected by nor attracted to the music in those shows. The DEH soundtrack was like a drug; it felt like what I imagine a sudden jolt of popularity feels like for an outcast, or when the girl you’ve pined after but never had the courage to approach finally takes an interest in you. Fitting, given that those are two of the show’s principal narrative cogs.
Despite my early connection to the show’s music and the story I could piece together from it, my relationship with it as a whole never really came of age until my mom got involved. She was the person to first get me into musical theater; she had a penchant for playing the soundtrack to Wicked while preparing dinner as though it was a step in the recipe. I like to think that she took my brother and me to see the musical version of The Lion King when we were younger not merely because of the Disney film’s fixed presence in our lives, but because she knew it would be a proper introduction to that world. My brother, though a fan of Hamilton (like the rest of the American population aside from the increasingly rowdy clan who deem Lin-Manuel Miranda insufferable), never really caught onto Broadway the way that I did. I always saw it as one of the things I shared most intimately with my mom, like reading books.
Something we also share: worrying. She often jokes that I got my anxiety from her, and though I’m not complaining, I know she’s right. I saw a “worry doctor” when I was younger because I couldn’t keep from overthinking, dreading that the worst possible outcome to any given scenario loomed just around the corner, and that no matter what I did, I was bound to get caught in its web. I now see a therapist; it took me a bit too long to realize that those two medical professionals shared the same title. Nevertheless, my mom has always been the person to encourage me that having those feelings is okay, and that she’d always be by my side, no matter what. In so many words, she always reassured me that no matter how big things felt, she’d do her very best to make them feel smaller, and to hold my hand until they did.
I never really felt DEH the way it was supposed to be felt, nor connected with it entirely, until introducing it to my mom. She “got it” immediately — the lyrics, the metaphors, the significance of the tonal shifts from song to song — much quicker than I did, but then again, she’s a mom, and they tend to operate somewhere between the space of a genius and a savant. (Particularly mine, no offense to the rest.) Listening to the soundtrack with her often led to performing with her. She’s practically the only person I feel comfortable truly singing around, largely because I’m insecure about my voice, but primarily because I’m insecure about everything. The power a mom has to make all of that wash away with a mere look or squeeze of the hand is one that stretches to most of them, I imagine, but mine has a tried and true knack for it. I don’t think they teach that.
Fast forward, about a year or so after I first heard “Waving Through a Window,” and almost a full year after I’d introduce my mom to the soundtrack, she got us tickets to go see the show for my birthday. It was the summer of 2017, just before I entered my sophomore year of college. I had still yet to see the show; not even a bootleg would have scratched my itch, so I avoided them at all costs, waiting for the moment mom and I would get to see it together. We wanted to be in the audience, feet from Ben Platt’s spittle as his character’s words fail to atone for his wrongdoing throughout the story, my hand in my mom’s.
I’ll never forget the look on her face when we arrived for the matinee show and the sign on the door displayed the following: “The role of EVAN HANSEN will be played in this performance by MICHAEL LEE BROWN.”
This happens. Broadway matinees often come on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and given the burden eight or more shows per week can take on a voice — particularly when the part is as taxing a performance as that of Evan — alternates and understudies are bound to appear, sometimes unexpectedly. Mom and I, however, had come to know Evan Hansen as Ben Platt, and vice versa, almost as distinct and connected as the character and his blue polo. We were devastated that Platt wouldn’t be performing; he was leaving the show soon, the role he had brought to life, and though it took a few minutes for it to sink it, we both soon realized that we’d never really see Evan Hansen. Dear Evan Hansen, sure. But its titular character would be taking on a new, unfamiliar form, an unknown face and voice belting out the numbers we’d assumed belonged to Platt and Platt alone.
[An aside, to make something clear: no matter who was playing who that day, we were blessed to be there at all. Tickets weren’t cheap as the show rose in its popularity, and they never got any cheaper over time. I’ll be curious to see where ticket prices sit once the show returns to Broadway following the pandemic-enforced hiatus every show has endured over the last year (when the district reopened on Sept. 14, just three shows resumed operation; more are being added and coming home every day). I’ll be even more curious to see what the average DEH seat costs given the impending release of a film adaptation inspired by and based on the musical. But more on that later on.]
While this revelation was disappointing, it was my mom who took on the brunt of emotion for both of us. I remember her crying, and even if that’s me misremembering exactly what occurred, I remember her tearing up. She loved Platt’s voice, and coupled with our collective anticipation for his Tony-winning work and her having gotten us tickets for my birthday, I think she ever so slightly felt as though she had let me down. Of course, that couldn’t possibly have been the case, nor would it ever have been. A giraffe could have played the show’s main man and I would’ve just been happy to be there.
And so I was; Michael Lee Brown wasn’t Ben Platt, but he also wasn’t a giraffe. The cast was as brilliant as ever, and the music connected with us more than it ever had through a CD player (yes, we own and play the CD whenever we listen to the music). We laughed together — as depressing as the show is, it has plenty of moments that call upon a joyful response — and we cried together. Most importantly, we were together. Forget the rest; that’s what mattered. This little casting change felt so big to my mom at the time, I think. I hope she knew then, and if not, knows now that it never was. In the grand scheme of things, that was so, so small.
We always cry the most during one particular song — “So Big / So Small”, the one I come back to the most often when I think about the show and my mom — and our reaction was no different when listening to it inside New York’s Music Box Theatre. Well, in some ways, I’d say it was. It was jarring and visceral, watching Evan and his mom, Heidi, embrace at the show’s emotional climax — when Evan unveils his prolonged deceit to his mom, and, having lost everything he gained in such a flash, regresses to a mental point where he believes he’ll lose her, too — while sitting next to my own mom. As Heidi tells Evan she’ll always be there with him, to help make everything that feels so big become something that feels so small, my mom and I looked at each other, tears in our eyes, and smiled. That song isn’t just the one I associate with my mom. It’s a song, in a way, about me and my mom.
My introduction to Dear Evan Hansen came at what I’d still likely call one of the best periods of my life; my first in-person experience with the show came at a juncture I’d confidently call the worst. I’m open about the fact that I suffer from depression and anxiety, not like Evan but not to a point where it doesn’t often feel crippling. And entering my sophomore year of college, it all peaked. I’d cry myself to sleep, wondering if I was hated by people who, in hindsight, never gave me a reason to believe they hated me. I wondered if I had any value in the world. I had weekly panic attacks; I isolated myself from friends because I didn’t feel like I had any; I did everything I thought was in my power to stop these thoughts (… and notions), and yet nothing worked. I saw three or four different therapists, none of whom helped. In a smattering of ways, I felt like Evan Hansen. I understood his emotional plight, and in the context of his lowest moments, I knew how alone he must have felt.
I’d call my mom in tears, and though she’s a teacher, she never tried to teach me through those conversations. She maintained (and maintains to this day) grace and empathy, not identifying with how I felt but understanding the gravity of the feelings. She was the only person I wanted to speak to for months, and often, the only person I felt like I could speak to. Not just about these feelings, but about everything. When I was my most lost — my most broken on the ground — she was the one to make sure I was found. When everything in my life, even the things I now know to be small, felt so big, she made them feel small. She’s a master at doing it with school loans, too. “$26,000? Nah, you’ll topple it in no time.” It’s a sweet thought; she’s a sweet, perfect person I thank God every day to have won as my mom.
The song Heidi sings to Evan isn’t entirely about making the world’s biggest things feel as small as can be. She starts out by singing about how Evan’s father left when he was a boy, and how whether or not he remembers it, he feared that another moving truck, like the one his father used to abandon his family, would be coming “to take mommy away.” That, in and of itself, is a gutting lyric, but to me and I’m sure to many others, it spoke even louder than its chief contextual meaning. When I hear the words “Your mom isn't going anywhere… Your mom will stay right here. Your mom isn't going anywhere… Your mom will stay right here, no matter what,” I think of my mom, and how she’s never gone anywhere, how she never will, and how she’ll never let me forget it. Anytime the song comes on in the car or the kitchen, she tears up a bit and grabs my hand. She knows what the show, as a whole, means to me and says about those who struggle with mental health, like myself. So I think of her squeezes as inaudible ways of saying “I’ve got you. Your mom isn’t going anywhere.”
I know, mom. And thank God for that.
I found myself thinking about Dear Evan Hansen, “So Big / So Small,” my sophomore year, and my mom again while watching a screener of the film adaptation earlier this week and struggling with my connection to it. Under the direction of The Perks of Being a Wallflower’s Stephen Chbosky, the film — which releases in theaters tomorrow — feels stale, emotionless, and messy at times. The actors’ faces, even that of Ben Platt’s, whose casting has been derided and widely criticized for his age and the lengths to which the film (poorly) went to ensure he appeared prepubescent, seem uninterested in the weight of the story and the gravity of the tragedy they’ve all found themselves being a part of. Also, pardon my French, but Platt does, indeed, look like shit, like a Cabbage Patch Kid someone left laying on a hot driveway for a few hours too many.
But for me, a fan of the musical — clearly — and an appreciator of adaptations when kept (mostly) faithful to a source, it’s hard to agree with the notion that Platt’s age presents a grooming theme to the film; that’s a miss for me. It’s a poor casting decision, and when he’s not singing, his work is forgettable. And yes, what the character does, leaving the people he aims to impress and receive adulation from in his wake while twisting a tragedy for his own benefit, is borderline sociopathic, but that doesn’t mean that the character is, nor that the film’s intentions are such. It’s a musical that is manipulative because it’s depicting well-intended manipulation, not because it’s aiming to adorn an unintentionally sadistic teenager.
No one is forcing you to empathize with Evan Hansen; what the book’s author, Steven Levenson, and composers Justin Paul and Benj Pasek intended to do with the musical was illustrate a web of manipulation so deep-seated in selfishness and so horridly problematic so that, yeah, by the end when Evan Hansen finds himself broken on the ground once again, you feel a little lump in your throat. The musical, and thus, the film — so, better yet, the story — is morally off-kilter at its core. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a connection to it, nor does it make me wrong for finding things about it that I appreciate. That I can identify with what Evan Hansen is going through with his mental health doesn’t make me a wretch willing to capitalize on a classmate’s suicide for my own popularity; it does, however, make me see why this particular, broken character might do such a thing. Such a terrible, terrible thing, one that he believed would prove beneficial for him, and yet leaves people broken and aching instead.
That’s an important juxtaposition that the film doesn’t do nearly as well as the musical; the film amplifies the tragedy with set pieces that work better on film than they do in the musical, because of the space the characters are given to work with in a real house or a real high school hallway. But in doing so, Chbosky and co. amplify their goals to requite Evan. They close the film just as the musical concludes, with Evan staring out into the sun at his future, something Connor doesn’t get to have, and something the boy in the blue polo has all the time in the world to explore. I didn’t like the movie. Frankly, parts of it made me sick. But I do deeply like Dear Evan Hansen. There’s a difference.
In her review for Vox, Alissa Wilkinson wrote that with this story, she has to “decouple my identity at least a little from my taste. What I like or what you like tells us something about our stories — where we came from, what we aspire to, who we want to be, who we are. But in most cases, it isn’t a measure of our validity as humans. If I find myself liking Dear Evan Hansen, it’s probably because I’ve felt, at some point, like a misunderstood, ignored outsider, not because I can’t see its faults.” To which I say: yes.
I like Dear Evan Hansen because I’ve often felt that way — lost, alone, misunderstood. And I love that it’s something my mom and I share, no matter that connection often comes back to one of the darkest times in my life. I’m thankful for that time in my life, and for the music I found myself identifying with then, and for the person who was beside me through it all. In the midst of darkness, light persists, right? Or, better yet, even when the dark comes crashing through… you will be found.
Consumption Corner
I (somehow) find time to read a lot, watch a lot, and listen to a lot throughout my weeks here on the internet. Consumption Corner is where I’ll recommend some of the things I appreciated the most. They may be old, or they may be new, but from shows to films to books, I figure the least I can do is lend some insight into the things that make me the cultured young man that I am.
The Reading List:
AI’s Islamophobia problem by Sigal Samuel (Vox)
The Post-Survivor Economy is Thriving by Mara Reinstein (The Ringer)
Book Smart: Phoebe Robinson on ghosting, refusing failure, and shaking up the publishing industry by Phoebe Robinson (Entertainment Weekly)
With God, Against the World by Cody Benjamin (Bright Wall/Dark Room)
'The One That Stayed': Reds Star Is Finding Satisfaction in Abandoning Perfection by Stephanie Apstein (Sports Illustrated)
The Secrets of the World’s Greatest Freediver by Daniel Riley (GQ)
What I haven’t stopped watching:
I haven’t necessarily been able to “not stop watching” this quite yet, seeing that only one episode has aired, but I’m already itching for more. You see, one of my best friends in the world is on a television show this year. It’s a competition show, one on which you have to outlast all other competitors in order to win the grand prize and the title of sole survivor. I am, of course, talking about Jeff Probst and the best show on television, Survivor, which returned last night for its 41st season after a 16-month layoff to smiles and tears from my living room. Jeff doesn’t know we’re best friends, but I’m playing the long game.
So, OK, I’m not actually talking about Survivor, even though that’s incredibly exciting. Let’s go to a different network, a different show, with different contestants who all have a similar motivation, and a different best friend in the midst of it all. It’s a little show called The Voice; my pal Jack Rogan auditioned on the premiere. As good as he is a Spikeball partner, he’s a better musician, one with unique tone and genuine storytelling ability as a songwriter and naturally gifted singer. He sang House of the Rising Sun; he crushed it. Kelly Clarkson and John Legend turned their chairs; Ariana Grande and Blake Shelton are now dead to me. Jack chose to join Team John; he received a boxing robe in return.
Jack is going to win this show. My best pal is going to win The freaking Voice.
It’s fine. It’s no big deal. It’s not like I’ve been telling anyone with a pulse that they need to tune in this season to watch the bashful boy from Rochester masquerade as Johnny Cash-meets-Jason Isbell-meets-John Mayer on a nightly basis. Actually, screw that, I’m owning this, if not for me, then for Jack: this is f#$%&*! sick. I can’t believe it’s real, and yet I’m so unbelievably thrilled that it is. No one deserves it more than Jack. I can’t wait to watch the rest of his journey unfold. Heck, I can’t wait to watch his life change.
And finally… what else I’ve written lately:
Represent: Jaylen Brown is on the forefront of change (CelticsBlog)
What if Luke Kennard was more of a slasher? (Clips Nation)
A goodbye tweet:
Thanks, everyone. As always, back here next Thursday.
Your voice with help many people to “be found”. Bravo, Will 😘