Washington Post - Highly Recommended
"...This touring version, directed, like the original Broadway incarnation, by Michael Greif, upholds the exemplary standards established by the musical at Arena back in the summer of 2015. Which is to say, the music and script still fuse marvelously in the account of the big lie in which introverted Evan Hansen envelops himself and the vulnerable people around him."
DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended
"...Some musicals are all about the entertainment. You expect to see some awesome dancing, amazing singing, and leave the theater smiling (see my review of Disney's Aladdin, also currently playing at the Kennedy Center). You may remember the happy feeling of seeing the show a few years later, but there will have been no lasting impact on your life. Dear Evan Hansen, the 2017 Tony Award-Winning Best Musical, is not that type of musical. Instead, it is a poignant and heart-wrenching look at human relationships and it is guaranteed to stay with you long after you've left the theater."
MetroWeekly - Highly Recommended
"...Dear Evan Hansen now comes back around in the touring production of Greif's Broadway staging, booked for a four-week, sold-out run at the Kennedy Center, but no longer upholding the mantle of this season's edgiest pop culture phenom about disaffected teens. In fact, a few years of audience-pleasing commercial success might have smoothed some of the show's formerly sharp edges. As, say, NBC's Hairspray Live! is to John Waters' film Hairspray, so does this touring iteration of Evan Hansen appear to be a well-executed version of a version of something that likely felt more authentic in an earlier form."
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"...Ben Levi Ross understudied the role of Evan Hansen on Broadway and completely embodies the role with genuine and sweet nerdiness. He backs it up with an amazing and powerful voice that carries the heavy vocal demands of the role. Ross' performance is magical. As his mother, Phillips is heart breaking as a mother trying to be both parents to her son. In the beautiful "So Big/So Small," she tells him she will always be there for him. It can't help but bring tears to your eyes."
Theatre Bloom - Highly Recommended
"...Today is going to be a great day and let me tell you why. Because today (and most days between today and Sunday, September 25th), you have the chance to buy tickets to see the incomparable Dear Evan Hansen at the Kennedy Center!"
DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended
"...Dear Evan Hansen is a musical unlike anything that had come before it-a psychological snapshot of the social media world teenagers struggle to navigate as their parents look helplessly on ("Anybody Have a Map?") and the emotional fallout from the ever-increasing isolation technology engenders. What truly sets the show apart is the intimate familiarity captured by songwriting team Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dogfight, La La Land, The Greatest Showman) and book writer Steven Levenson (Masters of Sex). The songs and script intricately balance the painfully-funny, funnily-painful, and cringingly-awkward interactions between teenagers, their peers, and their parents."
BroadwayWorld - Highly Recommended
"...The phenomenon that got its start in DC at the Arena Stage in 2015 has come home to DC for a five week, sold out run at the Kennedy Center. Dear Evan Hansen is the story of an anxious young man desperate to fit in, and the powerful musical is opening the conversation to a wider audience as it launches a 50-city national tour of the United States, with international productions in Toronto and, next year, London. In an age when it's easy to feel increasingly disconnected, the revolutionary Dear Evan Hansen reminds us in myriad, potent ways that we are not alone."
