Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews for this highly anticipated transfer from Broadway.
The Independent: ***** “With his phenomenal voice and almost flagrant cuteness, Platt generates the impression (however unfair) of leading a charmed life as a performer. Tutty is more than equal to the part’s extraordinary demands – his strong singing voice has the plaintive wail and SOS falsetto of someone in a rapture of neediness – but he also radiates the haplessness of a misfit propelled into a situation that is at once horribly comic and tragic.”
London Theatre Reviews.co.uk: *** 1/2 “Dear Evan Hansen is an entertaining – and filled with talent – show, that will have a long life in the West End. And this is not a lie.”
The Guardian: **** “The music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul – who collaborated on the movies La La Land and The Greatest Showman – are good enough to overcome the occasional holes in the story. The songs, mostly in a pop-rock idiom, seem to happen instinctively rather than being carefully planted.”
London Theatre.co.uk: **** “Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s beautiful score may be a little ballad-heavy, but has integrity and depth that matches the story they have to tell, whose book is written by Steven Levenson.”
WhatsOnStage: ***** “The result is something quite extraordinary – a musical not like any other. Director Michael Greif’s staging is desperately, torturously uncomfortable at times, while other moments shimmer with genuine pathos.”
Evening Standard: *** “the show engages with the real world in a way most musicals simply don’t. But Steven Levenson’s book relies on a large amount of coincidence and is curiously old fashioned in its interface with modern life: everyone’s on Facebook, no one has a phone.”
The Stage: **** “Even with its flaws and shortcomings, Dear Evan Hansen matters because what it’s trying to say completely squares with what it’s trying to do.”
Culture Whisper: **** “Dear Evan Hansen is universally heart-warming and thought-provoking, but it’s particularly pertinent for teens and young adults whose impulse is to bottle everything up and retreat into themselves. The show zings with zeitgeisty details about a generation who grew up online, but there’s also a timelessness in the emotional arc of an outsider who finds his way in.”
Londonist: ***** “Sam Tutty is wholly absorbed in the role, sings extraordinarily well and is touchingly convincing as a boy whose speaking voice is breaking while his singing voice can incorporate a haunting falsetto.”
Time Out: **** “It looks so simple but there’s something incredibly accomplished about the way that ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ fleshes out its lovable protagonist’s small world of home, school and laptop – then creates a trap that feeds him and poisons him all at once.”
Dear Evan Hansen continues to play at the Noel Coward Theatre. To book tickets click here or visit: Love Theatre.com, From the Box Office, Theatre Tickets Direct.co.uk, Last Minute.com, Encore tickets or See Tickets.