Dear Evan Hansen issue...- Page 6

[CallMeAl2]

Posted: 5/1/17 at 3:24pm

qolbinau said: "So you're saying the initial decision re: lying about the letter was altruistic? Personally, and perhaps I've interpreted it 'wrong' I actually thought he lied about the note because he didn't want his feelings for the girl to be exposed.

That's interesting - that thought about not wanting to expose his feelings for Zoe didn't enter my head in the scene with the parents. That's one of the things that makes DEH so interesting is that there are so many angles in play at the same time.

I saw him directly responding to the pain of the parents. Such as when the mother said something to the effect that the letter was all they had left of their son, Evan offered her the letter. He saw that it meant much more to her than to him.

"

 

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 5/1/17 at 3:48pm

cam5y said: "I do actually think that "it gets better" is a bad message. It is overly simplistic, and for some people it's untrue. If I had heard either "it gets better" or "you will be found" as a teenager, it wouldn't have helped me. My response would have been, "how do you know?" If people take comfort from it then that's fine. But to act like it is unequivocally positive is just not the case. It wasn't presented as a possible outcome- if it had been presented as a possible outcome I wouldn't have had a problem with it."

Of course no one knows the future... but that doesn't mean that as humans we don't try to encourage and uplift each other. When a baby starts to walk, or a kid is trying to learn how to ride a bike, or someone is on their way to an audition or interview, you say "you can do it!" not "well, you may or may not do it." Of course things may not actually get better for someone, but I think it's extremely cynical to suggest that we start saying to depressed people, "well things could get worse. We just don't know." Would you have preferred it presented as "You Might Be Found"? 

I'm a logical person too (to a fault), so I get where you're coming from, but total honesty in cases like this is really not helpful. I deal with depression, and I found the show to be extremely comforting. Not necessarily in a literal "you will be found" sense, just in that there's a show that chooses to tackle these complicated issues at all and has started a conversation. Regardless of how my life turns out, "you are not alone" is a good reminder. 

[sydney16]

Posted: 5/2/17 at 6:20pm

Jennifer Laura Thompson and Laura Dreyfuss talk about Connor / the end of the show at about 17 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ruQPyFOXc 

[cam5y]

Posted: 5/2/17 at 6:57pm

JudyDenmark said: "cam5y said: "I do actually think that "it gets better" is a bad message. It is overly simplistic, and for some people it's untrue. If I had heard either "it gets better" or "you will be found" as a teenager, it wouldn't have helped me. My response would have been, "how do you know?" If people take comfort from it then that's fine. But to act like it is unequivocally positive is just not the case. It wasn't presented as a possible outcome- if it had been presented as a possible outcome I wouldn't have had a problem with it."

Of course no one knows the future... but that doesn't mean that as humans we don't try to encourage and uplift each other. When a baby starts to walk, or a kid is trying to learn how to ride a bike, or someone is on their way to an audition or interview, you say "you can do it!" not "well, you may or may not do it." Of course things may not actually get better for someone, but I think it's extremely cynical to suggest that we start saying to depressed people, "well things could get worse. We just don't know." Would you have preferred it presented as "You Might Be Found"? 

I'm a logical person too (to a fault), so I get where you're coming from, but total honesty in cases like this is really not helpful. I deal with depression, and I found the show to be extremely comforting. Not necessarily in a literal "you will be found" sense, just in that there's a show that chooses to tackle these complicated issues at all and has started a conversation. Regardless of how my life turns out, "you are not alone" is a good reminder. "

Well, there have been other shows that have tackled these complicated issues. For me, Next to Normal was a much more sophisticated attempt to address the subject. For me, "You are not alone" is a very different message. One of my favourite songs in all the world is "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. That doesn't imply some kind of resolution to the person's situation, as "you will be found" does, but says that you are not alone. Obviously "You might be found" is a less strong message than "You will be found", but I just don't think it's helpful to teenagers to say that things will definitely get better. This may also be a transatlantic divide; as a British person, I suspect that I am more cynical than most Americans.

And I should add that I didn't hate the show; far from it. I thought the score was stunning and Ben Platt's performance was absolutely amazing and I'd be gutted if he didn't win the Tony. I do have issues with the book as I (and others) have outlined here. But all three of the front-runners this year have different strengths and weaknesses. I have my own preference, but I acknowledge the others' strengths as well. 

Updated On: 5/2/17 at 06:57 PM

[Gensho]

Posted: 5/3/17 at 1:10am

The father in the Curious Incident of the Dog deliberately lied to his son and told him that his mother had died. The mother was not dead and was writing letters to her son that were intercepted by the dad. Well, the son found the letters. I loved the scene where the father was hung out on a cross, murdered. Oh wait, that family actually worked through their ****. 

It's only Evan Hansen, a teenager, that has to pay the price. He has to pay the price of being the lead of a successful musical. 

[cam5y]

Posted: 5/3/17 at 3:42am

Gensho said: "The father in the Curious Incident of the Dog deliberately lied to his son and told him that his mother had died. The mother was not dead and was writing letters to her son that were intercepted by the dad. Well, the son found the letters. I loved the scene where the father was hung out on a cross, murdered. Oh wait, that family actually worked through their ****. 

It's only Evan Hansen, a teenager, that has to pay the price. He has to pay the price of being the lead of a successful musical. "

The family in Curious Incident worked through their ****, and we saw it happen. Any working through of **** in DEH happened offstage.

[dianamorales]

Posted: 6/9/17 at 11:51am

Bringing this thread back because I keep seeing references to it in Tony boards.

This already had one of the best books ever, IMO, but reading through this made me love it so much more. I've never seen a show depict both high schoolers and anxiety so accurately. Jared is a perfectly written character. Morally, I think that the show has an incredibly complex resolution, which is why this board exists. People leave thinking about and wanting to discuss it, which is the mark of a great book.

As someone who's had severe anxiety my whole life, just seeing such an accurate depiction of anxiety is therapeutic. The first time I saw it, I was completely blown away not even 5 minutes in. The exact conversation Evan has with his mom is one that I had with mine probably every other week in high school.

However on the moral issue that this board raises- like many others on here, I think it's clear that Evan knows he's doing wrong, and that mental illness drives him to make mistakes he knows are wrong because he's simply been driven to a point of desperation. That makes him a round and honest character. As far as the "it gets better" message- I've seen the show six times, and that's never come across for me, and that's a good thing. I think that "it gets better" is basic and exclusive. I think that the message of the show is "you are not alone"(/you will be found). It almost goes unspoken, but it's obvious. Every single character is struggling with the same things Evan struggles with. He isn't alone. It also ties in with social media- Evan isn't alone, he's surrounded by a social media "community", which is a blessing and a curse.

 

[3NU]

Posted: 6/9/17 at 1:41pm

Nicole7579 said: "The marketing is the biggest letdown. You Will Be Found was a lie Evan told himself in the story. He wasn't found and neither was Connor. And sometimes that happens. What then? "Step into the sun" would've been a better slogan which some suggested on here."

YES!  #StepIntoTheSun would have been such a fantastic and meaningful slogan.  Unfortunately, the producers took the route with the easier sell...

 

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/9/17 at 8:30pm

Kad said: "My biggest issue is that the plot really has one way out- Evan is exposed and must face the enormous consequences- and that the writers were entirely unable to fully commit to it, opting instead to skip forward to a conveniently tidy ending in the future, leaving all of the actual denouement to happen offstage.

 

"

As usual, a perfectly cogent and concise appraisal from Kad.

There haven't been so many hysterical cries for poetic justice since Corneille was battling the Academie Francaise in 17th century France!

I've been wondering whether anyone saw a little film called SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE? Okay, the brother there wasn't dead, but he was in a friggin' coma! (I can't comment on the ending because I haven't seen the film myself. LOL.)

[Babe_Williams]

Posted: 6/9/17 at 9:34pm

GavestonPS said: "Kad said: "My biggest issue is that the plot really has one way out- Evan is exposed and must face the enormous consequences- and that the writers were entirely unable to fully commit to it, opting instead to skip forward to a conveniently tidy ending in the future, leaving all of the actual denouement to happen offstage.

 

"

As usual, a perfectly cogent and concise appraisal from Kad.

There haven't been so many hysterical cries for poetic justice since Corneille was battling the Academie Francaise in 17th century France!

I've been wondering whether anyone saw a little film called SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE? Okay, the brother there wasn't dead, but he was in a friggin' coma! (I can't comment on the ending because I haven't seen the film myself. LOL.)

 

"

That is While You Were Sleeping. Fantastic movie, extreme plot holes, but was written as a romantic comedy and I don't think the movie took itself too seriously. Also, noone died. 

Updated On: 6/9/17 at 09:34 PM

[3NU]

Posted: 9/9/17 at 3:24pm

Ugh.  I audibly groaned when I saw this on Facebook yesterday.  Clearly, the marketing works, but it makes me frustrated how utterly misguided it is.

At least the producers used "Step into the Sun" explicitly on the DEH Instagram page...even if it was simply a reference to getting outside on Labor Day. 

Updated On: 9/9/17 at 03:24 PM

[GeorgeandDot]

Posted: 9/9/17 at 3:29pm

Yeah I love the show, but I must agree that the marketing is misguided.  I hear a lot of people saying that it helped them and inspired them to love themselves and do some good, but I still feel like it contradicts the whole point of the show.  I guess if it's doing some good I can't really complain.

[bear88]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 4:43am

An aside:

I only saw Next to Normal in a local production a few weeks ago and went in pretty cold, aside from being aware that it was often compared to Dear Evan Hansen. 

What struck me was how bleak and unsparing Next to Normal is by comparison. Stop reading now if you haven't seen it, as spoilers follow. Mom is a suicidal mess. Her teenage daughter is understandably unlikable, stressed out and fed up. (By the end of the show, I was rooting for her boyfriend to run far away, for his own good.) Dad ends the show abandoned and devastated, all of his well-intentioned efforts to no avail. I had some issues with the musical, but it sugarcoats nothing.

Which brings me back to Dear Evan Hansen. The latter show feels like it takes pains to soften the blows and keep its characters as likeable as possible. Ben Platt keeps the audience on Evan's side, and book writer Steven Levenson keeps the darkness at bay. Rachel Bay Jones is a relatable parent, doing her best. The satire is sharp at times, but it doesn't cut too deep. Dear Evan Hansen is a funnier show, which is in part a tribute to the writing and performances but also to the fact that Next to Normal - while not without laugh lines and satire - is mostly a series of tragic revelations followed by depressing aftershocks.

My point here is not that Next to Normal is a better show because it's more tragic. I'm not sure it is better overall, and my point here isn't to start a debate about that. They are two very different musicals in many ways. But Dear Evan Hansen often seems to want to have things both ways, to introduce mental illness and anxiety but touching lightly on the darkness that goes with it - and ignoring the impossibility that such a person could pull off such an elaborate scam. Evan's story reaches a dramatic climax with the inevitable revelation of the truth, then skips ahead a year to a time when all of Evan's sins are forgiven and everyone except Connor is better off. As Kad has observed, any healing that occurs happens offstage.

Next to Normal leaves nothing but damaged victims, even when they did nothing wrong. That feels sadly true to life. By comparison, Dear Evan Hansen feels like a caper in which theatergoers leave on an upbeat note while wrongdoing is downplayed or excused.

The show's defenders rightly point out that theater is filled with characters who make terrible mistakes and do worse things than Evan Hansen without losing our sympathy. The fact that people like me can like the musical, all things considered, while feeling queasy misgivings is perhaps a tribute to it. I just still can't shake the feeling that Dear Evan Hansen let its title character and its audience off much too easy.

Updated On: 9/10/17 at 04:43 AM

[GeorgeandDot]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 6:08am

I don't think that the problem lies with Evan not getting the proper punishment, but rather with Zoe's dialogue at the end, which even I will admit is somewhat problematic.  I've heard it said many times before that Evan should probably run into Connor's mother at the Orchard.  It would make for a more interesting ending IMO.  I actually have a huge problem with Next to Normal, both in the actual quality of the score and book, but I also have a problem with how unapologetically bleak it is.  It becomes so bleak that I'm actually left completely cold by it.  I remember seeing it the first week that it opened, and I was expecting to be so moved by it and I actually just left the theatre with dry eyes and a puzzled expression on my face.  It was just so depressing that I literally didn't feel anything.  I felt like I was reading a textbook.  I also think the characters are paper thin, but I'm not even going to get into that.  I've directed the show a couple of times to try to give it some soul and I think the cast was able to breathe some life into it, but it's just an incredibly flawed work.  Evan Hansen isn't perfect, but at least it's moving and is actually a pretty accurate depiction of social anxiety for some people.  I related to it because I saw myself and my son in the characters and I realized how easily we could've found ourselves in a similar situation.  Evan Hansen is actually a really thematically complicated show.  I could write a book about it, but I think a lot of people are distracted by the marketing department's choice to portray the show as a musical about teen suicide when that's very clearly not what the show is about.  The show is kind of satirical in a way and I wish more people would pick up on the nuances.

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 12:11pm

Your critical analysis is all well and good. Please, do carry on. But none of us can dictate HOW others should receive and/or respond to a particular piece of art. If it "inspires" or helps them, then great. Let that be. Accept it. You may feel differently. That's fine. Please, continue voicing that.  But everyone really needs to stop trying to diminish the feelings of those who are, in fact, emotionally moved or impacted by Dear Evan Hansen. 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 1:18pm

Amen.

 

May I ask where you think DEH has SATIRE? 

[RaisedOnMusicals]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 2:03pm

GeorgeandDot said: "Yeah I love the show, but I must agree that the marketing is misguided. I hear a lot of people saying that it helped them and inspired them to love themselves and do some good, but I still feel like it contradicts the whole point of the show. I guess if it's doing some good I can't really complain."

Look everyone, the marketing of a show is geared to one thing: selling tickets. Nothing else. And judged on that and that alone, it's been pretty successful, don't ya think? So to say that the marketing is "misguided" is misguided to the extreme. 

Have none of you ever seen a pull quote from a review used completely out of context and unfairly  in an ad? 

[Alex Kulak2]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 4:03pm

Ben Platt posted on Twitter earlier today that playing Evan has taught him that we are lovable even in our darkest moments, which I think is the most fundamental theme of the show: We all are entitled to our humanity, even when our peers, our Facebook feeds, and even our brain chemistry's tell us otherwise. So no, I don't think Evan is to blame Connor's death. Connor found the letter, read it himself, got the wrong idea, and ran off and killed himself. That's very different from insinuating that Evan is directly responsible for Connor's death. It was to tie Evan to this story and to examine how low a person who is starved of human connection will go.

[GeorgeandDot]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 4:30pm

dramamama611 said: "Amen.



May I ask where you think DEH has SATIRE?"

The writers have said that the show was almost a full blown comedic satire.  Their goal was to write a musical about how we live in a society where we feel so alone that we inject ourselves into other people's tragedies.  I guess the show isn't so much a satire anymore, but I still think that there are remnants of the original concept.

As for the marketing, I think the reviews, cast album, and hype are what's selling the show not the choice to advertise the show as a feel good musical about teen suicide.  The choice to use #youwillbefound is a little odd when you see how it's used in the show.

Anyways, I love this show and I think it's wonderfully written and performed.  Sorry if it seemed like I was being hyper critical or anything.

 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 9/10/17 at 5:23pm

^That doesn't sound like satire.

 

The other poster talked about the satire present -- I wanted to know to what he was refering.

[CallMeAl2]

Posted: 9/11/17 at 12:40am

dramamama611 said: "^That doesn't sound like satire. The other poster talked about the satire present -- I wanted to know to what he was refering."

Alana and Jared carry most of the satire. Almost everything Alana does and says is satire - her constant search for a connection to Connor, her pressing everything that happens into service for her college application and especially the way she exploits Evans letter for a fund-raising opportunity.

 

[kdogg36]

Posted: 9/11/17 at 8:50am

I only saw the show once, at Second Stage, so you can take this with a few grains of salt. But I do think there was at least a dash of satire aimed at the social networking culture that helped Evan's lie spin out of control so quickly. That's a peculiarly modern phenomenon that is "sent up" by the show, so to speak.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 9/11/17 at 10:03am

Of course!   Thanks for the jolt to my memory -- those were characters I wasn't even thinking of!

[herewegoabc]

Posted: 9/12/17 at 7:21am

This isn't really on topic, but I've often thought about how horribly ironic it would be if Connor didn't even commit suicide.

Allegedly, in one of the earlier versions of the script, he also steals a bottle of Evan's meds when he steals the letter. There is a cut song from Arena Stage that references an obvious problem with pills (missing pills from the medicine cabinet, missing kid found passed out in the park). I know Connor's death and Connor himself are left vague in the actual show, but if he died of an overdose (and obviously we do not know that he did) that everyone assumed was self-inflicted because of the presence of what they took to be a suicide note...

If The Connor Project was created and went viral as a suicide awareness group and the subject didn't even actually commit suicide, that would add a whole other level to the already crippling fraud surrounding it.

[BuddyStarr]

Posted: 9/14/17 at 11:46am

I've been thinking about the issues with the story line in this show and Ben Platt's wonderful performance and it got me thinking about casting and if that could have potentially doomed the musical. In a conversation with a friend of mine who also loved Ben's performance but had issues with the storyline, I asked him how it would have been different if Evan was African American. With all the "whitewashing" being talked about, I was thinking about how, if at all, the musical would have been different if the lead character was not white.  Unfortunately, I do not think the public would have accepted a non-white Evan doing all the things he does in the show without severe consequences.  Do we have unconscious bias because he's white?  I'd like to think I'd have the same issues with the show and the outcome regardless of the ethnicity of the lead.

Forgive me if this was already discussed but I tried searching through boards and couldn't find this topic discussed.