Dear Evan Hansen Walks Through the Uncanny Valley, Ascends Anyway

Photo: Erika Doss/Universal Pictures If you have heard one thing about the movie musical Dear Evan Hansen, it’s probably that the star is too old. “Old” in this case means “in his late 20s,” and despite a long history of creaky elderpersons playing teens onscreen , for many, the casting of a heavily made-up, 27-year-old Ben Platt has been one uncanny valley too far.

Because dear little Evan has certainly done something awful. In Steven Levenson’s script , the socially anxious Evan — through a maze of coincidences and accidents — winds up pretending to have a friendship with fellow student Connor , who has died by suicide. The letter that starts “Dear Evan Hansen” is actually written by Evan himself as a therapy exercise.

Monstrous behavior happens in musicals , but music has the power to cue our emotions any which way — the melody swells and our sentiments follow. In Dear Evan Hansen, Evan’s behavior verges on sociopathy, yet songwriters Pasek and Paul give him such heartrending arias, expressing such a depth of feeling, that the theatrical audience empathizes with Evan’s hurt and not the hurt he’s caused.

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