Touring Broadway Production stops in Fort Collins

I could not be happier that social media wasn’t around when I was in high school. Adolescence has always had a way of making even the smallest mistakes feel catastrophic, but today’s teens face an entirely new level of pressure, with their actions taking on a permanence and life of their own online.

This is one of the central tensions explored in the Tony Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen. Nearly a decade after its Broadway premiere, the show is on a new national tour, which I caught at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins.

Watching the musical now, it’s fascinating — and unsettling — to see how its themes have aged. In many ways, the show feels rooted in a very specific cultural moment. Yet, with the rise of AI blurring the lines between fact and fiction, the growing vitriol of online interactions and a post-pandemic youth mental health crisis (including here in Larimer County), the musical feels, if anything, more timely than ever.

Longing for connection

The story follows Evan Hansen (Michael Fabisch), a high school senior struggling with social anxiety. At his therapist’s suggestion, he writes daily pep talk letters to himself. After his classmate Connor Murphy (Alex Pharo) dies by suicide, one of Evan’s letters is found in Connor’s pocket. The boy’s grieving family assumes the two were close friends, and Evan — caught in a whirlwind of misunderstanding and his own longing for connection — doesn’t correct them. Instead, he builds on the lie, sparking an avalanche of unintended consequences.
On the surface, Evan’s actions seem easy to condemn. And yet, the musical skillfully maintains a level of moral ambiguity that feels authentic and deeply human. As layers of Evan’s life are revealed — his absent father, overworked single mother and struggles with mental health — his choices, however flawed, start to make an uneasy kind of sense.

Strong portrayals

As you’d expect from a national tour, the performances in this production were outstanding, with the cast bringing a vulnerability to their roles that brought this morally complex story to life. Fabisch’s portrayal of social anxiety felt both raw and relatable. You couldn’t help but feel for him, even as he dug himself deeper into his own undoing. The vocals were equally impressive, particularly Hatty Ryan King as Zoe Murphy, Connor’s sister. Her dynamic solo in “Requiem,” a haunting song in which the members of Connor’s family grapple with their grief, gave me goosebumps.

With music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the show delivers numbers that hit hard and linger long after. The songs tackling mental health are the standouts, striking a balance between Evan’s deeply personal struggles and a universal resonance. “Waving Through a Window” captures Evan’s crippling self-doubt while “For Forever” aches with longing and loneliness. And then there’s the 11 o’clock number “You Will Be Found” — undeniably powerful, if a bit on-the-nose, and practically begging for a gospel choir (and, of course, a hashtag). Not every song lands as well. “To Break in a Glove,” performed by Connor’s dad Larry (Jeff Brooks), gave him a nice vocal moment but felt more like filler. A few others veer into that same category, but the emotional weight of the highlights more than makes up for it.

Screen time

One of the defining set design elements of Dear Evan Hansen is its use of projections, which constantly flood the stage with social media posts, text messages, and other fragments of internet content across sprawling screens. It’s a clever nod to the endless digital noise that shapes our lives, emphasizing how cyberspace infiltrates our every moment.

Conceptually, it’s smart, but in practice, I found it distracting, and at times even a bit nauseating. This was particularly true at the Lincoln Center, which may have been hindered by the placement of its projectors. Many of the projections in this production also seemed like stock images, which pulled me out of an otherwise carefully crafted experience.

Still, I get it — social media is as much a character in this show as any of the people on stage, and it’s vital to remind us of its ubiquity. In a time when everything can be amplified and distorted online, it can feel like there’s no space left to be truly human. Dear Evan Hansen is about life’s messiness and how it can’t be reduced to bite-sized snippets.

It’s also about our attention spans, and perhaps my own distraction is part of the point. The musical offers a sobering reminder of the emotional toll of living in a world that demands so much of our focus, and yet so little of our empathy.