‘Dear Evan Hansen’ Preview

The touring production of Dear Evan Hansen makes its return to Northeast Ohio for two shows at Akron’s EJ Thomas Performing Arts Hall on November 12 – November 13!

Declared “one of the most remarkable shows in musical theater history” by the Washington Post, the show includes some of the most iconic musical theatre songs from the last decade, including “You Will Be Found,” “Waving Through A Window,” and “For Forever,” DEAR EVAN HANSEN features an uplifting score by the Tony ®, Grammy®, and Oscar® winning team behind The Greatest Showman and La La Land, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a book by Tony Award-winner Steven Levenson.

Prior to the show arriving in town, performers Alex Pharo (Connor Murphy) and Jeff Brooks (Larry Murphy) checked in with CleveRock by phone to discuss the show!

CLEVEROCK: The plot of Dear Evan Hansen is pretty well known due to the show’s long run on Broadway, touring productions, and, of course, the 2021 feature film. But for those still unfamiliar, can you please give a quick synopsis of the show?

ALEX PHARO: On a base level, it’s just a story about lying and deceit, but also hopefulness and finding connection in a world that makes you feel a little bit more on the solitary side. It centers around this kid named Evan. He struggles with a lot of social skills and anxiety in school and finding connections with other kids. There’s this family, the Murphy family; Connor and Zoe are the kids; Larry and Cynthia are the parents; and there’s obviously not a great dynamic between them. And there’s an incident one day where Evan and Connor meet and Connor gets ahold of one of Evan’s letters that he writes in therapy that mentions his sister, Zoe, and blows up. And he eventually takes his own life in the next few days. And this whole story builds up about Evan wanting to try to help the Murphys, and he ends up making up a bunch of lies, and it turns into this whole catastrophe that’s hard to watch but also has some beautiful moments.

Jeff Brooks: Alex is talking a lot about a main theme in our piece about connecting to other people, finding a connection, finding a way to connect to other people, whether it be in your own family or through friends at school. And for anyone who comes to see the show or for people who know the show, understand that a huge component of our piece is social media and the use of social media and how social media has improved our social lifestyles, but also, in a way, disconnects us from each other. We’re able to reach across great distances and, speak with each other over great distances, and have information at our fingertips. But in a lot of ways, social media has isolated us all, and that story is told in so many ways through the eyes of the Murphy family where these parents, who a lot of people come to see our show at a certain age, will understand what it’s like to be a parent in this day and age where you start to lose connection with your children because you don’t speak their language, you don’t speak the tech speak that they have at their fingertips that they’ve grown up with now that so many of us had to learn how to do along the way. That’s also an aspect to this is that need, that desire for connection with your friends, your family, your people, your circles, but also this looming thing that stands between us all, which is this vast gap and this distance that we can’t even quantify of the social media space.

CLEVEORCK: In any musical, the story and the music are the wheels that make the show turn, but there are so many other elements in the show, especially one like Dear Evan Hansen, be it the set design, the choreography, the lighting. .. Is there something that a theater patron coming out to the show in Akron should really be on the lookout for; something critical to the show that might get lost in the shuffle with the focus being on the music and story?

Jeff Brooks: It will be very hard for anyone in these audiences to miss the story because if there’s one thing that I have always said is, one of the more important pieces of this story is our lighting. Our lighting is bar none, some of the most impressive designs I’ve ever seen. And it’s unique in a way that we don’t have a lot of standing sets. We don’t have any walls, and we don’t have any doors, and we don’t have any of this. We have floating spaces that exist in this sea of light that is constantly moving and constantly changing and framing the characters in ways that seem very hyper futuristic in a lot of ways. It almost feels like a rock concert in a lot of ways. I would say the light design of this piece is something that will engage an audience, but also help tell the story and focus where the audience needs to be looking at any given point. You’ll never be lost looking at this show.

Alex Pharo: Going off of that lighting and our projections combined with the sound design, again, it is something that you don’t see a whole lot, and there’s points in the show where it literally feels like you are inside of a cell phone or a computer because of all these mechanisms that are going on in these isolated lighting spots and these amazing panel projections that we get to play around with.

CLEVEROCK: Who would you say is the target audience for Dear Evan Hansen? Who will enjoy this show the most? The show has an important message. Who will benefit from watching the story unfold?

Jeff Brooks: For parents, this show will reach out to you in an interesting way, specifically, I think, from our characters. It’s really heartwarming piece for families.

[videopress v328NvjD w=3840 h=2160]

CLEVEROCK: What does that mean to you both, as actors, to be able to be in a show with a profound impact? Obviously, there are a lot of popular musicals, especially classical ones, that are fun and uplifting, but Dear Evan Hansen has a deeper meaning and message. How does it feel to deliver that message and be part of that impact on the audience?

Alex Pharo: It means everything. This story, even after eight years, is still so important, and it still holds true to our world today. I just feel like the luckiest person in the world because even if I just catch a glimpse of our show from the wings, I just have to pinch myself all the time because we get to tell this amazing story to new audiences every day. And the fact that I get to do it with all these people because we just have such an amazing cast and crew, it means a lot. We are very lucky to be in this position.

Jeff Brooks: I’ve done big musicals before. I’ve done classic musicals and had people say, ‘Oh, that was really fun. We had a really great time.’ I haven’t really had a lot of opportunities like this one where people come up to us after the show, and they look us directly in the eye, and they say, ‘Thank you so much. That really means something to me.’ I think that something about this piece is so intimate that people feel like we’re delivering it directly to them and not just performing on a stage and they’re just in the audience watching it happen, but it’s happening to them, and we’re singing to them, and we’re singing about them. And so many people are like, ‘I felt I felt that show. I felt that one, that one. I felt like it was for me.’ And so to be able to reach out to an audience on that level of intimacy and connect with people on that level, that’s really special.

CLEVEROCK: What is your personal favorite moment as a performer in the show? Maybe not what the audience loves the most, but What is your favorite moment that you look forward to as a performer?

Jeff Brooks: That’s an easy one for me! I’ve got a couple of fun little moments in the show, but my favorite moment in the show is toward the end of the second act. You heard Alex talk earlier about this lie that Evan tells, and the lie grows and becomes this huge thing, and everyone in the audience feels it coming. They’re like, ‘Oh, at some point something’s got to give, the other shoe’s got to drop. Something is going to happen, and this lie is going to come out, and everything is going to crush this poor kid.’ And inevitably, the audience’s worst nightmare comes true through an anxious scene late in the second act where he finds himself finally coming clean. And I get to be a part of that scene. The reaction that I get to kind of elicit in that scene as the father who has been lied to, needless to say, there won’t be a dry eye in the house for anyone who’s watching because they’re all just biting their nails watching it, and then it’s heartbreaking to watch it kind of all fall apart. So, as sad as that sounds, that’s my favorite moment of the show.

Alex Pharo: I love watching that scene. But one that I always look forward to is a scene actually towards the beginning of the show where Connor and Evan meet kind of for the first time. They have an awkward interaction, but there’s just a slight moment right before it all goes haywire when they have just the tiniest spark of connection, and we’ve kind of made it. We try to make the audience think there’s actually a chance they could have been friends and they could have had some sort of relationship, but it all just kind of goes away in the blink of an eye. That’s something that I always look forward to every night.

CLEVEROCK: Can you both discuss what attracted you to wanting to audition for your roles in this show?

Jeff Brooks: We have two very different approaches to this. I had never actually seen the show. I still have not seen the show from start to finish, and I’m in it. So I’m waiting for my opportunity to swing out of the show and actually see it, but I never got the opportunity to see it on Broadway. All I had ever done was listen to the original Broadway cast recording. So that was what I had to go on going into my audition. And I’ve developed this really wonderful connection to this beautiful piece over time. But my connection to it is very different from Alex’s.

Alex Pharo: I’ve been attached to the show since it first premiered. It’s the first musical I fully listened to and got hooked on, and it’s really what got me into this field because I thought the story was so powerful, and the music was just amazing. I’ve been with the show for a while, so memorizing lines and songs wasn’t too big of a problem for me. I was almost like yelling at Jeff when he told me he had never listened to it!

CLEVEROCK: I need your best sales pitch. Why should someone in the Akron / Cleveland area come out and see Dear Evan Hansen when it’s in town next month?

JEFF BROOKS: The music is award-winning, and everybody knows at least one of the songs. The composers of our music just became EGOT winners. Needless to say, this piece is one of those pieces that anyone who is a fan of theater is going to want to say that they were there for. So whether you’ve seen the show and you know that it’s good, you still want to go back and watch it again because this production is fantastic!