True Lies

Dear Evan Hansen and The Present.

Ben Platt (center) stuns in Dear Evan Hansen.

            Evan Hansen, of the musical Dear Evan Hansen, now playing at the Music Box, is not, as you might originally think, a real person, press-ganged into service in what would be his personal hell, performing in front of thousands of people week after week on a Broadway stage.  In fact, he is portrayed by an actor, the twenty-three-year-old Ben Platt, though you could be forgiven for the mistake given that Mr. Platt delivers what is probably the most naturalistic turn in any Broadway musical, ever, and given the fact that he is, for Broadway, so resolutely unglamorous.  His words escape from his mouth in rat-a-tat barrages, as if he has been trying to keep them hidden but can’t quite manage it.  When seated, he rears back from conversational partners and freezes, almost in terror.  Perhaps most notably, his right hand appears to be beyond his control – it wanders and spasms; it nearly conducts, actually – in the fashion of someone whose life is similarly beyond his grasp.

            Evan’s story, as told by librettist Steven Levenson and composing team Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, is complex, and the work required to establish its premise would be less than worthwhile given that the show is best experienced with as little prior information as possible, pure, like an adrenaline shot.  Suffice it to say that it involves Evan, an anxiety-ridden seventeen-year-old (perhaps a tautology), the object of his affection, the sixteen-year-old Zoe Murphy (Laura Dreyfuss, understated and wonderful), and her misanthropic outcast of a brother, Connor (Mike Faist), as well as assorted well-meaning but misguided parents and schoolmates.  A case of mistaken authorship leads Evan down a path from which he can’t turn back; he acquires a measure of celebrity, achieves personal security, and follows his good intentions – pure but based, fundamentally, on a lie – to the point of no return.  It is wrenching.  It is beautiful.  It is magnificent.

            It is not an overstatement in the least to say that just as Oklahoma can lay claim to being the first fully integrated musical in the basic tradition of jazz and ragtime, so can Dear Evan Hansen be called the first fully integrated pop musical – not to diminish the score, since it’s nearly unclassifiable, completely unique, and gorgeous beyond reasonable expectation.  Everything – everything – is in the service of the story, and not a note nor a word rings false.  Its vision is total.  It never cheats.  It’s pretty near-perfect.  In Platt’s masterful performance, Evan’s loneliness and isolation are all too familiar – but we’ve never seen anything like the musical that bears his name.

            It’s been an odd season for dancing celebrities.  In Sam Gold’s Off-Broadway Othello, at the New York Theatre Workshop, Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo can be seen to cavort joyously to Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” in what must certainly be the happiest prelude to any spousal homicide on the American stage.  And now, in Andrew Upton’s Chekhov adaptation The Present, at the Ethel Barrymore, Cate Blanchett hops up on a dining room table, showers herself with vodka, and grinds on an old man to Haddaway’s “What is Love?”  It’s a bit like an unorthodox Clue solution: “Blanchett in the Australian production of the Russian play with the Eurodance music.”

            The play is really very good, but similarly disjointed.  Sprawling, cynical, and impressive, as directed by John Crowley, Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh, and a company of similarly attractive Aussies (Toby Schmitz is a standout) all act powerfully in this quintessentially Chekhovian work, based on his untitled first play, written when young Anton was just eighteen.  It should come as no surprise given the proclivities of the author who inspired The Present that the pistol Blanchett fondles in the first act goes off by the fourth.  Nor, given the production’s country of origin, should it be unforeseen that the production is phenomenally sexy, passionate, and hot-blooded from tip to toe.  What is unexpected (and disappointing) is the startlingly weak third act, seemingly visiting from another play, and the dialogue, which starts off wonderfully moody and introspective but, after intermission, becomes so dense and impenetrable it nearly crowds the stage.

            Still, by and large the story fascinates, as Roxburgh’s charismatic philanderer and Blanchett’s pyromaniacal widow lay waste to a perfectly pleasant birthday weekend in 1990s Russia – a conscious, and an intelligent, setting adjustment by Upton, who’s fascinated by the era’s conflict between the old and the new.  But generally the production’s theatrical ostentation is not its strongest suit.  The Present works best when it allows its characters to live there.  One can’t help feeling Upton would get better results, given his superb actorly ingredients, by keeping it simple – start with a base of resentments, sexual competitiveness, and class conflict, and stir in the cruel, manipulative Russian gentry of Chekhov’s fetid imagination.  Sprinkle in the Haddaway – conservatively.  Then, let sit – and squirm.