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DEAR EVAN HANSEN is back (but different!) | News of the non-replica UK Tour and Australian premiere
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Now, I will preface this by saying as and when they start really pushing the marketing for the Australian production of Dear Evan Hansen, if they do not use the phrase Dear Evan Hansen, today is gonna be a g'day and here's why I will personally riot. You get a Dear Evan Hansen and you get a Dear Evan Hansen and you get a Dear Evan Hansen. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre and today I have come on here to talk about all things Dear Evan Hansen amidst the news that there will be brand new production of the show touring the UK from 2024. It's an extensive UK tour. It's visiting many venues. There was speculation about whether or not the show would be going on tour after its London run ended, and now that we know it will. But not as we know it because when I say this is a brand new production, this is literally a brand new production of the show. It's going to be a non replica staging of Dear Evan Hansen, which is fascinating for so many reasons, but it's also not the only non replica production of the show being produced because and Australians, this is your moment. This is the moment. Australia is also getting a 2024 production of Dear Evan Hansen in a different staging to the original. Now, I call myself an international theatre critic because I review shows everywhere, but I have been sleeping on Australian theatre news, it must be said. But it must also be said that their Dear Evan Hansen news is definitely world leading. So in today's video, we're going to be talking about both of these upcoming productions. We're going to talk a little bit about the show's history and why it is that we're seeing brand new versions of this musical rather than tours and international productions that resemble the original version. Does it have to do with the show's contemporary themes? Does it have to do with the response to the film adaptation? A little recap of the history of this musical will answer those questions. Now, if you enjoyed today's video, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. I post theater news as well as reviews, fun theatre challenges, as well as the occasional little bit of rumor and speculation, of which there is a teensy bit coming in today's video. So stay tuned. If you want to see my videos before everyone else and gain access to some occasional exclusive content, you can click on the link in the description and sign up to become one of my YouTube channel members. You can also find me on other social media platforms. I am ickyjoetheater on Instagram, TikTok and the app formerly known as Twitter. Finally, before we get into the bulk of today's video, comment down below with your thoughts about Dear Evan Hansen about these upcoming productions. Are you a fan of this show in the UK or Australia who is planning to go and see either of these new versions of the show when they open next year? Let me know. For now, let's talk about the various new productions of Dear Evan Hansen. So if you do not know this musical, let's briefly recap its history. So Dear Evan Hansen made it to Broadway in 2016. It is the story of an anxious teenager who finds himself embroiled in a lie surrounding the suicide of his classmate Connor Murphy. It becomes about the dangers and toxicities of social media as the whole thing begins to play out online. And it's an original story inspired by the high school experiences of one of its writers. The score is from rising composing stars Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, with a book by Stephen Levinson. Now the show, perhaps controversially, won the 2017 Tony Award for Best New Musical as well as five other Tony Awards including Best Score and Best Book Leading Actor in a Musical for its original leading man Ben Platt, who played Dear and gave everything, as well as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Rachel Bay Jones, who played his mother Heidi Hanson. Now after Ben Platt left the show on Broadway, other actors to play the role of Evan included Taylor Trench and Noah Galvin, who is currently engaged to Ben Platt. I don't think they've got married yet. I think they're still engaged. Also Andrew Barth Feldman and Jordan Fisher. There was a North American tour, there was a sit down production in Toronto, Canada, and in 2019 the show opened at the Noel Coward Theatre in West End. In fact, I was there at the first preview performance, why am I not wearing my hat? I should be wearing my hat now. The West End production enjoyed similar critical success. It won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. It also won for Best Score. Now we do not have a category over here for Best book, which is a nonsense all of its own that I've already spoken about in another video. But similarly, Sam Tutty won the award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his performance as Evan Hansen. There was a spin off book, a film adaptation was announced and everything seemed to be going perfectly for this show. That is until the Pandemic shut down theatre around the world. This sudden break in the show's momentum, as well as a slightly controversial response to the film adaptation, which starred Ben Platt, despite many people saying he looked too old in the film to still be playing a high school student, and he was only given the opportunity because his father was involved in it, has been credited as the reason why Dear Evan Hansen's sales slowed down when it reopened after the Pandemic. I think another contributing factor in this is the fact that audience appetites changed after this period of lockdown and after this period of having to stay indoors. It was a very challenging, anxiety inducing, depressing time for many people. And I will come back to this later. But we did see a big pivot in the show's marketing because the marketing team working on Dear Evan Hansen was very aware of this shift in audience mood coming out of the Pandemic. People didn't want to go to a show that was depressing and angsty. People wanted to go to something that was entertaining and uplifting, that would make them smile and laugh. So whereas beforehand the show had marketed itself itself by showing Ben Platt doing the whole scene leading into waving through a window on American television and showing him as this edgy, awkward teen post pandemic, there was a very big focus almost exclusively on the song. You will be found with a slightly tailored ending to make it sound more hopeful and optimistic than it actually does in its full dramatic context. The idea was to reframe Dear Evan Hansen as this positive and uplifting theatrical experience. Whether or not that's true and whether any of the other factors I mentioned played a part, the show eventually closed both in the West End and on Broadway. Now, interestingly, in the us, it's not uncommon for a very popular show to launch a national tour alongside its Broadway run, which is exactly what happened with Dear Evan Hansen. You had these as concurrent productions. The UK as a country is a hell of a lot smaller than the U.S. and for that reason, you don't tend to see shows unless they are super successful launching national tours alongside their West End runs, at least for the first five years. To put that in perspective, Hamilton has been open for around a decade now in the West End and is only just now launching its first ever UK tour. It also took Wicked quite a long time to do that, and the reason for this is some of the farthest UK counties from London are still a lot closer to the West End and a lot closer to London theatres than many of the states in the us. So while the show was running in the West End, no tour was announced. And when it came for the show to close with Sam Tutty still in the Leading role of Evan Hansen. There was a lot of speculation about whether or not it would tour because sales had ostensibly slowed down. So it wouldn't be the perfect time to launch a big touring production. Now, to put this in perspective for you, the show closed in the West End just over a year ago. And earlier this week we had the news that there will be a UK tour of Dear Evan Hansen, but not as we know it. So I got sent this press release literally yesterday. Let me tell you everything we know about this UK touring production and why it's going to be different. So first of all, Ambassador Theatre Group Productions and Nottingham Playhouse present a new production of the Olivier, Tony and Grammy Award winning Best Musical. Dear Evan Hansen. This is the immediate sign to us that this is a non replica staging of the show because it is being produced by different people. And if this were to be a tour of the original production, you would see the same producers attached, but instead Nottingham Playhouse and Ambassador Theatre Group, a company that owns many of the UK's regional theatres and has a presence in the West End as well as a little bit of a presence on Broadway that may be set to increase with their upcoming merger with Judson. They are co producers on this brand new production. Now I've used the word non replica a few times and that's what this is. Let me tell you what I mean by that. So when you have this really big successful show, think of something like Wicked. It subsequently is produced internationally and what they do is they replicate that version of the show. When Wicked from Broadway, which originated on Broadway tours around the us, you are seeing by and large, with slight differences because of different theatre specifications, you are seeing a replica version of that show. It's the same set, costumes, choreography, direction. The Broadway and West End productions of Wicked are replica productions. They are the same production. Replica productions of Wicked have also gone to Australia, to Asia, I believe to Europe, to Brazil. But as Wicked celebrated 20 years on Broadway last month, we have also begun to see see non replica versions of the show popping up around the world. So these are officially licensed productions that have been permitted by the powers that be by the writer. Stephen Schwartz has been very involved in these productions and these are productions in places like Scandinavia. There's one in Sweden right now. The production in Sao Paulo, Brazil recently closed. In fact, I was flown down there to go and review it. I've made multiple videos about that. You can go and find out more about it. But to sum it up briefly, they will have a different creative team, a different director, a different set Designer making a different set, different choreography, different costumes and even where it's exactly the same script and songs, what you get is cosmetic changes, but also because of the different direction and different staging, a very different approach to storytelling and a lot of the same words can hit very differently. So that is what we would call in the theatre world a non replica production. And that is what Dear Evan Hansen is about to start getting. Is this the right way around? Oh, it is good for me. So this touring production here, it's opening at Nottingham Playhouse on 9th September 2024. It's launching there. They are a co producer of the tour. I've never been to Nottingham Playhouse, but this seems like a great excuse to go and visit for the first time. Now, the original Broadway and West End productions were directed by Michael Greif. This production will be directed by a UK director for the first time in the show's history. And it's going to be Nottingham Playhouse's artistic director, Adam Penford, which makes sense because this is a big deal for this ven. And there's a little statement that he made here as well which is very illuminating. He said, Dear Evan Hansen has thrilled audiences on both sides of the Atlantic since it first premiered in 2015. Evan's powerful story grips and moves people. Told through a captivating script and musical score, this first major new and exciting UK production offers the opportunity to re examine some of its contemporary themes and present this brand new version to Nottingham and around the uk. I'm excited to begin the search for our Evan very soon. So this answers multiple questions because Sam Tutti has been so inseparably linked to the show while it's been here in the uk. He is the only principal Evan Hansen the UK has ever seen alongside some very talented understudies and alternates. But there was a lot of talk about whether or not he would be reprising the role if there was going to be a tour. Now the fact that this is a new production with a new creative team would presumably put that to bed. But in fact they have basically confirmed it here that they will be searching for a new Evan. And I would guess that they might be looking for a graduate performer, someone very young. But that isn't the only thing we learned in that statement. The exact wording here was this offers us the opportunity to re examine some of the show's contemporary themes and present this brand new version. Now, by contemporary themes, there's two ways you could interpret this because it wasn't only Ben Platt's casting In the film that was beginning to give musical theatre audiences the ick when it comes to this show. This show, which was hugely popular online when it was first on Broadway, the tide began to turn a little bit as more and more people decided that the way that it presented mental health and even Evan as a character was not something they were necessarily eager to support. Which is a very nuanced conversation that I don't necessarily come down on either side of. On the one hand, I don't think Evan Hansen as a character is as immoral as a lot of people like to pretend that he is, because his situation is very clearly shown and explained to us within the context of the musical. He didn't seek to go out and lie. He found himself falling inadvertently into a certain situation that was very difficult for him to extricate himself from. However, on the other hand, I do think that the show's depiction of mental health is on occasion unhelpfully ambiguous. And for sure there is more that you could do with this show when re examining the material, but by contemporary themes. I'm not sure if what we're talking about here is the show's depictions of mental health or just where it sits in the social media age. Because when people describe this show as having aged poorly, they're talking about two different things. It makes explicit references to social media, which as we know, evolves very quickly. So a show written in 2015 that's talking about social media is going to have a dated perspective on it. At the same time, when they're talking about it aging poorly, they are also talking about its relationship to the concept of mental health. And the way that we talk about mental health also evolves almost just as quickly in society these days. So which contemporary themes exactly is this new UK tour going to be re examining? I am deeply curious. And is this the kind of re examination that happens in any non replica production where they just look at the source material that they have and try and tell that story in new ways? Or are the original writers somehow involved in helping to shape and adapt a new version of the show, One that will play a little bit better in 2024? Nothing in this press release as of yet suggests that that might be the case. But I am idly wondering now, everything else that we get in this press release is just information that we knew beforehand about the show. The only other thing it tells us is this extensive touring schedule. It's going to be going to a lot of places. I'm just going to quickly run you through these if you hear your city, shout it out in the comments section down below. So it's opening at Nottingham Playhouse through the end of September. It's then doing a week at the Leicester Curve, another week afterwards at Theatre Royal Brighton, heading back up to the Midlands the following week. That's a lot of mileage at the Birmingham Alexandra, back down south for the new Victoria Theatre, woking up to the Leeds Grand. These are both standard touring one week runs, not like the massive sit down runs that the Lion King or Hamilton UK tours are doing. We then go to Liverpool Empire, Sunderland Empire, the Oxford New Theatre, and that takes us through Saturday 30th of November 2024. The next dates we have are from the 14th of January. Now, if you've been paying any kind of attention here, you may have noticed there is a gap in that touring schedule. And the reason for this is possibly twofold. For one thing, a lot of these venues will have pantomimes booked in over the Christmas period. Just about every regional theatre in the uk, not all of them, but most of them will do pantomime over Christmas. It's a huge earner for these venues and it's a huge thing in the uk. A lot of families who don't go to the theatre ever in their year will still go to pantomime and they will take the whole family and they will take the kids. So many schools will book in entire classes for schools performances of pantomimes. They're huge. So there aren't going to be many free venues for the show to visit over the Christmas period. So one of two things is going to happen here. Either they are just going to be taking a break or the show has an as of yet unannounced sit down somewhere else, potentially in a regional theatre that can accommodate them. But it's not clear why that wouldn't have been announced here. I am speculating that the show might be making a London return during that Christmas period. Christmas is a very lucrative time and it would not hurt for a London venue, maybe somewhere like the Peacock Theatre that is also housing the London leg of the Everybody's Talking About Jamie tour. I think that would be a good move for them to get the Dear Evan Hansen tour. Maybe that's already been agreed and it just hasn't been announced yet. That is my rumor and speculation for this video anyway. So then in 2025 we have a week at the Northampton Derngate. Following that, the Mayflower Theatre in Southampton, which is the theatre I grew up with. Yay for them. After which it goes to Milton Key Marlow Theatre in Canterbury, Bristol Hippodrome, the Palace Theatre in Manchester, the King's Theatre in Glasgow, His Majesty's Theatre in Aberdeen, then flying over to the Grand Opera House in Belfast, back to the Story House in Chester, down to New Wimbledon Theatre, which is a London theatre. Anyway, so that's giving them some kind of a London footing for a week in March 2025. Back up to the Wolverhampton Grand. Now it's doing Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It's visiting a lot of venues over its extensive tour that are quite near to each other. If you don't see it in Leicester, you can see it in Birmingham or Wolverhampton. Those are all in the Midlands. It's doing Wimbledon and Woking. There's a lot of tours that do one of those, but not both. It's going to the Sheffield Lyceum Theatre Royal Plymouth, the Hull New Theatre, the Wales Millennium Centre, and currently finishing on the 17th May 2025 at Theatre Royal Norwich. Now that covers pretty much all of the uk. Did it have a Dublin date? That seems like something that might be missing here. Maybe that's the as of yet unannounced Christmas 2024. I don't know because otherwise it seems like a pretty decent coverage. Like anyone in the UK who is a Dear Evan Hansen fan, it seems like it's going to be coming somewhere near you. And needless to say it is way too early for us to know anything about casting. I would expect for Evan to be played by a grad because this is a new production. I wouldn't anticipate any of the other roles being played by people who were previously involved in the West End production. That happens sometimes, but it's not usual. But like I said at the start of this video, this is not the only non replica version of the show coming next year. So let's travel on down to Australia to hear about theirs. Now I will preface this by saying as and when they start really pushing the marketing for the Australian production of Dear Evan Hansen, if they do not use the phrase Dear Evan Hansen, today is gonna be a g'day and here's why I will personally riot. Okay, so understandably I do not get Australian theatre press releases. So let's find somewhere where this news has been posted and find out more about it. Because I also do not know much about Australian geography. I'm given to understand that mostly what happens in Australia is shows will sort of tour between the two major cities because there's not one obvious theater hub like in the uk It's London in the us, It's New York in Australia you have Sydney, but also Melbourne. Right, here we go. So this appears to be being produced by the Sydney Theatre Company, so presumably is beginning at least in Sydney. So this is being produced by Sydney Theatre Company and Michael Castle Group and it's being directed by Dean Bryant, again a different director to the original production. This is the Australian premiere of what it's calling the Tony Award winning sensation. And helpfully this tells me here that Michael Castlegroup of the company that brought Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Curse Child to Australian shores. It confirms that this is a brand new production helmed by one of Australia's great interpreters of musical theatre, Dean Bryant, who is credited as having directed Fun Home and Hubris and Humiliation. It calls the show an empowering and uplifting experience for anyone who's ever considered themselves on the outside always looking in. How much are Australian theatre tickets? What are these ones going for? I mean, it's cheaper than Broadway and they have under 30. Sign me up. So the show is going to be in previews from the 12th to 17th October 2024, which is the super brief preview period to be developing a new production. Maybe it won't be as tech heavy as that original Broadway and West End staging. And then the full run of the show is currently only from 19th October to 17th November 2024. This is also a very brief run considering that this is the Australian premiere and I'm guessing there are a lot of Australian musical theatre fans who are going to be excited about this show coming to Sydney. Is this then traveling anywhere else? I know that that's something that happened. Maybe that's a detail that gets announced subsequently. Again, Australian theatre fans talk to me in this comment section. Normally does something open in one place and then sort of like if it's successful, they will say good news, it's gonna close here, but then it's gonna go off somewhere else. What theater is this even? I didn't even tell you what theater this was playing in in Sydney. Did they tell me? They didn't tell me. Don't assume I know anything here. Australia. Oh, it's the Roslyn Packer Theatre. I don't know. Let's google the seating plan. Oh no, let's try and buy tickets. Can I buy tickets yet? Have they gone on sale? I can select seats on a map. What kind of theater are we looking at here? I love how this video has just become Mickey Jo learning things about Australian theatre. If I get excited and buy tickets to this, then I'm gonna need to get flights to Australia. Oh, that's an interesting circle. Okay, so we have just like a circle installed. It's not the biggest theater in the world, but it's not, like, small. Okay. Okay, let's talk about something we haven't spoken about yet with either of these, which is the new artwork. So this Australian version has the same font, the same sort of Dear Evan Hansen logo. And we see a boy wearing a cast from behind and sort of anxiously and nervously scratching the back of his head. He's wearing blue and white horizontal stripes, which is familiar of the iconic blue polo shirt from the original production, but it's different. This is one of the details you can expect to see. He's not going to be wearing that same blue polo shirt. I mean, he might be, but he's probably not. Bear in mind all of the costumes you may be expecting from the original version of Dear Evan Hansen more than likely will be completely different in this production. The cast could be on the other arm. I know. Madness. It probably won't be, but it could. The way that Connor writes his name on the cast could be completely different. They'll probably try and go for, like, the same visual gag because the fact he writes it so big always gets a laugh. But basically nothing visual about this new production is set in stone already, or set in plaster, as I should say. Let's go back to this new UK tour production, see what their artwork looks like, because you'll notice that that Australian listing was very focused on saying this is an empowering, uplifting story. Again, we are still post pandemic. People know that this is what audiences want. So the UK tour artwork, it is that original iconic blue polo shirt. Again, the font is the same, so I'm assuming that's just something that's licensable. When you license the show, that's when you go to the rights holders and say that you want to put on a production of the show. That font and the show's official logo will then be made available to you. One thing I know about the Wicked non replica I saw in Brazil is they were able to use the wicked font, but they couldn't use the little green witch that was flying over the eye. Just a fun little detail there. But just like with that Australian listing, this is a very, like, cutesy, heart stopperish vibe, which is not necessarily the first thing I think of when I think of Dear Evan Hansen. But they are certainly looking to try and dress this in A way that makes it more fun and light hearted and uplifting. We have all these people in colorful outfits on this bright blue, colorful backdrop. We have some yellow font. It's trying to give joy. We have little emoji faces. All of these people connecting with each other, chatting, smiling, holding their phones. And Evan stands apart looking like Timothee Chalamet in the middle there. Very much recognizable, but also a new look for the show. One that I don't think represents it completely accurately, but will probably sell more tickets. It does feel very marketed to teenagers. That's what I will say. This does feel like a very young graphic. Now last time I came on here and spoke about Non Replica Productions, people told me in the comments section that there are actually way more than I had been made aware of. And so I'm wondering if there have been Non Replica productions of the show already before this one. Weirdly, I don't think there have been in the us. Now, when a show begins on Broadway, the first place you might expect to see new productions of it would be popping up regionally around the United States. But presumably because the tour only recently finished in the US after recommencing post pandemic shows haven't yet been able to sort of fit it into their seasons for next year. I wouldn't be surprised if when we have big regional American theaters announcing their next seasons, if you started to see a lot of productions of Dear Evan Hansen popping up. We are only just starting to see productions of Waitress popping up regionally. So I dare say that Evan is coming. Everybody lock up your. Well, daughters canonically and apples, I guess. Apparently there's been productions in Finland and Israel. I'm googling this. Oh, also Argentina. What did Argentine Dear Evan Hansen look like? I bet that wasn't the same. I bet that was Non Replica Dear Evan Hansen, Argentina. This was a Spanish production. Was this the first non English production? It very much could have been. It was called Carido Evan. Oh, I mean that looks different. I think it's different. Is still wearing a blue polo shirt, but it has bigger horizontal stripes. Yeah, this definitely looks like a very similar but non replica staging of the show. So I guess that may have been the first one and there have certainly been a couple of others. Now the last thing I will say about this is it is intriguing that the first UK tour of this show is a different version of it. Certainly decades after something appears in the West End, you may begin to see Non Replica productions or for like Sondheim shows or for like classics when there is a new Sound of Music. When there's a new Oklahoma, they are a different production to the original. But so soon after the first successful production opened and won Best New Musical, your expectation would be that that version would tour the UK if anything was going to. We can infer from that that what has happened here is the original producers have relinquished their grip on this show. I made that sound very malevolent. But all it means is that they have decided they do not want to personally produce a UK tour or a new international production in Australia. And they are allowing other directors, other creative teams and other theatres and other production companies to create their own versions of the show. This definitely makes a lot of sense with the sort of change in the show's trajectory and in the audience response to it. There was a really pronounced shift in how people experienced this show pre and post lockdown because of the mood of the world, because of the film adaptation. And I think that initial momentum and enthusiasm that the original producers had has probably dwindled a little bit in light of some of those setbacks. So now what's easier for them than trying to reignite the world's passion for this show is allowing other production companies to try their luck at seeing if they can get something to stick. Which all makes it sound a lot bleaker than it actually is. Despite the show's popularity having changed, I do think that enduringly there are a lot of people who are going to go and see these productions, especially the very limited one in Australia. I think that's going to sell out, if it hasn't already. I couldn't see tickets. I think they're just not on sale yet. I feel like they go on sale this month. I think it will do quite well. It's not the kind of show where you'd expect to see sort of garish celebrity casting, maybe in the older roles, but preferably none at all. It's always interesting to see see how something will play regionally in the UK and if it does have the popularity to convince non obvious theatre fans in those areas to buy tickets. So I will be watching this very carefully and I will be watching the tour as well. I don't know which venue I'm gonna go see it in yet. Maybe I'll go and see the first performances in Nottingham, who knows? And if you guys really want me to, maybe I'll fly to Australia and go and see that production as well. I kind of throw that out there. Not actually expecting realistically that I will fly to Australia to go and see their non replica Dear Evan Hansen Next year but if any Australian theatre producers or businesses are watching this and want to fly me down to Australia to come and review your version of the show then I am open to it for now. Thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope that you have enjoyed. If you did, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel for many more reviews coming very soon about all of your favorite shows. I need to put this down. This is too much fun. Thank you for watching. Make sure to comment below with your thoughts about all of this. Let me know if you're going to go and see the Dear Evan Hansen tour in the UK if it comes to a city near you and I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.