DEAR EVAN HANSEN

Evan Hansen turns out to be not alone in all this in the end. An American musical at the Drama Theatre at Brno City Theatre

(…) The production is full of beautiful, rather wild and lyrical music, sound and lighting effects, interesting text, and great acting and singing performances. Theatre programmer Miroslav Ondra speaks of an exceptional and fantastic musical work.

(…) Two extremely talented young men take turns in the title role – Jan Brožek (at the premiere on Saturday 21 September) and Marco Salvadori, whom I saw at the second premiere a day later. Before the premiere, Brožek told journalists that the theme of the piece brings back memories of his school years and of coming to terms with childhood grievances. Salvadori told them that he is sometimes described as arrogant and self-confident, though in this production he has the opportunity of expressing himself as an introvert. Jan Brožek’s reviews have been highly complementary, while Salvadori has also proved no less impressive in the role. Their character does not leave the stage for almost an hour and a half, since everything revolves around him. Salvadori (and undoubtedly his alternate as well) portrays the nervous and somewhat unstable young man extremely well. At times he is frightened, uncertain and tongue-tied. He lives in his own world. His counterpart is the aforementioned self-confident Connor who shows his superiority over Evan in the very first scene. Actor Daniel Rymeš distinguishes between the two positions with great precision – in direct contact with the main protagonist and after his suicide, when he appears as an intangible apparition in Evan’s head. The actress and excellent singer Dagmar Křížová as the aforementioned Zoe Murphy is a wonderful addition to the production. She accompanies Evan with words and beautiful songs that she seems to reel out with the greatest of ease. They sing together, for example, the touching duet Only Us, though in Czech in the excellent translation by Zuzana Čtveráčková and Petr Gazdík. (…)

(…) Moša and the actors handle the relatively quickly alternating scenes masterfully – a delight for the audience. Set designer Christoph Weyers has placed school lockers and a number of screens on the sides of the stage which light up and flash during the production in the imaginative lighting direction by David Kachlíř. Andrea Kučerová has dressed the actor-singers in contemporary costumes that are both becoming and imaginative, as is always the case from her studio. The production is further enhanced by the projections by Dalibor Černák and Petr Hloušek. We find ourselves in various places during the course of the production. Not every member of audience may have noticed the seven-piece orchestra with conductor Daniel Kyzlink at the keyboard. The orchestra sits on the left in the gallery, with their music conveyed by large speakers on either side of the stage.

Despite all his ups and downs, Evan is not alone in the end, and the production comes to a close with a great reconciliation with captivating singing that leaves some members of the audience with tears in their eyes. (…)

A successful and optimistically bleak musical about anxiety

A musical does not always have to be just saccharine tinsel or a heartwarming musical narrative wrapped up in a sugary ending. Brno City Theatre has presented the Czech premiere of the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen. Despite the comic situations, the audience is treated to a story from high school that is almost tragic grafted onto an intimate musical story. This combination results in an imaginative inspection of tough topics such as anxiety, loneliness, depression and even suicide. (…)

Is this an optimistic story or a bleak one? The thing that makes this musical title so great is the fact that it is an optimistically bleak, though first and foremost positive, story that is not afraid to delve into abstractly “dark” themes. And the central message is simple: it is always best to keep on being yourself. No imaginary chimeras work in life, there is no need to try to be interesting to anyone at any cost. Embellishing and altering things or oneself (and not merely on Facebook) can lead to tragedy…

Director Stanislav Moša continuously tries to balance the touching aspect with the entertaining aspects of this musical work in his production. He does this by occasionally cutting through the bleak tone of the original with a witty characterisation or verbal shorthand of (in particular) the depicted adolescents. Up until the interval, the director is not afraid of poignancy on the stage, while the second half increasingly emphasises the main character’s journey towards the truth and the optimistic finale.

The world of high school and the world of information technology, in which today’s youth sometimes find themselves drowning in depressing fashion, are excellently illustrated by Christoph Weyers’s set. The set designer has surrounded the stage on two levels with rows of metal school lockers, from whose lower levels two beds (in the bedrooms of the adolescent protagonists) are pulled out. The simple furniture then consists of just a table and a few chairs. The three-hour evening is interrupted several times on a simple stage by a number of projection screens and televisions, on which frantic slideshows of words, letters and faces are shown. This frantic, furious and wild kaleidoscope of faces and sounds simulates the anxious trains of thought in Evan’s head, as well as the intensity of modern life and the clip-like character of the present. Weyers’s set provides the musical with an ingenious and attractive visual packaging.

Two screens on the sides of the auditorium provide a connection between the eight actors and the same number of musicians behind the scenes led by bandleader Daniel Kyzlink. A slightly melancholic sound permeates the entire evening. Most of the singing parts, particularly that of the protagonist, are in high positions, and at times singing is replaced by a kind of anxious spouting of sound or a kind of constricted mumbling to the beat of the music. In terms of the singing, the Brno production has no weak points or weak actors.

The main role is the only one with alternating actors, and I saw a truly flawless Marco Salvadori (who alternates with Jan Brožek). Expressing how a young man diagnosed with anxiety behaves through both acting and singing is quite a challenge. Salvadori does not merely pick nervously at his jeans, slouching with the mumbled speech of a teenager who does not believe in himself. With none of the stiffly unbelievable imitation of a mental disorder, Salvadori truly is Even Hansen and gives a detailed, structured and disciplined performance that unaffectedly functions as an advocacy for a character that is something of an anti-hero. Salvadori’s Evan is rightfully a magnet on stage and the highlight of the evening.

(…) Moša’s production is not aimed merely at teenagers, but will also prove an excellent treat for the legal guardians of teenagers and adults of all kinds. The new production in Brno does not exaggerate in any way, it does not overly dramatise serious topics for theatrical effect, but presents them with sincere and effective expressiveness. The production is, for this reason, perfectly justified in shouting to the world that they are putting on “the most successful musical of our time” in Brno. The people of Brno are providing ample evidence and confirmation of this marketing superlative with their theatrical creation.

You are not alone in this

The musical Dear Evan Hansen has become a phenomenon with a large fan base in the English-speaking world. Brno City Theatre has now presented it in its Czech premiere and can therefore boast another title that disrupts the common perception of musicals as a lightweight genre. At least from the perspective of theatre programming, this is, then, one of the events of the season.

Dear Evan Hansen is a piece that is concerned with the serious topic of the mental health of children and teenagers, which is perhaps even more relevant since the Covid pandemic than it was when the play was written. At the same time, it also draws attention to the dangers presented by social networks, where anyone can become an influencer, but may also become a target of hatred extremely quickly.

(…)

The title role at the premiere was played by Jan Brožek. A thirty-four-year-old actor may seem a little old to play a high-school student, but Brožek’s performance exudes youthful energy. He endowed the student suffering from anxiety with minor tics, though most of the time he is actually a normal-looking boy who has a tendency to over-react to stressful situations. The role of Evan Hansen is extremely demanding vocally, but Brožek handled his part more than adequately. I only noticed a few minor uncertainties in the high notes of the extremely difficult song Waving Through the Window.

Dagmar Křížová is vocally confident, and her Zoe is a character to whom one immediately feels an affection. Eliška Hladilová coped excellently with the role of the unsympathetic nerd Alana, and managed to give her an amusing affectedness and inner insecurity that humanises the character. Libor Matouš gave a nice take on the cynical commentator Jared and intimated that his self-confidence may only be masking difficulties in interpersonal relationships similar to those troubling Evan. Daniel Rymeš did not play Connor Murphy as an obvious tough guy, but endowed him with a hidden yet palpable sadness.

Connor’s parents provide an example of various techniques for coping with the grief associated with the loss of a loved one – while the mother (Lucie Bergerová) gives free rein to strong emotions, the father (Lukáš Janota) supresses them and keeps his suffering inside. Alena Antalová gave an extremely expressive performance as Evan’s mother Heidi and perhaps overdoes it a little in some scenes, though this approach is understandable in view of her character’s developmental arc and emphasises the difficulty of the search for a common path between the reserved Evan and the (often absent) mother who vents all her emotions. After all, the conflict between parents and children is one of the fundamental thematic lines in the musical.

Each of the characters makes their own mistakes, and lies and pretence help them cope with their own difficulties, so their behaviour is, if not excusable, then at least understandable on a human level. (…)

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