Then there are the severed relationships in the Murphy family, who are grieving the suicide of their son and brother, Connor, even as they find themselves, for different reasons, unable to sing his requiem. We learn that Evan, too, has faced the prospect of giving up.
Evan loves trees. But he is ashamed by a halfhearted attempt at ending his own life by jumping/falling out of a high tree. Connor, in the narrative Evan spins about their supposed friendship, loved an old apple orchard,— long since left to ruin. It is revived, ironically, by the campaign that grows out of Evan’s pretence. The tree motif extends into the heartbreaking mock-philosophical question: “When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around, do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?”
With all these arboreal associations and images, the great round tower of the onstage rig starts to suggest a tree-like presence, as the show moves from darkness and oceanic anxiety (or is it the blue haze of phone and laptop screens?) towards sunshine and natural light. This is Evan’s trajectory, from the teenage angst that tells him to “step out of the sun” to the culminating vision of the finale, in which “some other kid” is climbing a tree: “Even when it feels hopeless, like everything is telling him to just let go... He’ll hold on. He’ll keep going until he sees the sun.”
These may sound cliché, but sung, they become profound. Go and see _Dear Evan Hansen_. You, too, will be found.
_This review originally appeared in Business Day._