Dear Evan Hansen, Sydney Theatre Company and Michael Cassell Group, Roslyn Packer Theatre, 12 Oct - 1 Dec (and subsequent touring to Melbourne from 14 Dec, Canberra from 27 Feb and Adelaide from 3 April)

 "Dear Evan Hansen" is a teen angst musical about an isolated boy who finds an invitation into other's lives when he is mistakenly taken for a close friend of a fellow student who committed suicide - his engagement with the family of the dead student, his fellow students and his mother all spiral out of control as social media gets involved in spreading the mixed truths in the name of inspiration. Accompanied by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's songs which sound grandly inspirational until you remember exactly how much falsitude is behind them, it's a thought provoking show given a speedy, grandly powerful production from Dean Bryant and a skilled Australian team. 

For wahtever reason, Beau Woodbridge was not available to play the role of Evan Hansen at my performance so Lawrence Hawkins filled in - at such a level of performance that it would appear he's owned the role for months - he conveys Evan's nervous energy exactly, hitting every note of a challenging score and communicating how out of control Evan's life feels. He's surrounded by a strong supporting cast - for a big scale musical, this is a fairly intimate show, with a total cast of 8 - Evan and his mum, the suicidal Connor and his sister, mother and father, and two fellow students make up the ensemble. It's enhanced by video projections reflecting both memories and the social media world around the them (designed by David Bergman) - it's a staging that whisks us from location to location swiftly. The lighting design by Matt Scott isolates Evan in a bigger world excellently.

This show has its controversies - Evan's deception may start out as a white lie but it becomes obvious Evan's not entirely above taking advantage of his luck, and in behaving in ways that aren't entirely honourable. And the focus on him means that inevably some other characters around him fall into caricature - including pretty much all the other younger characters - this is particularly the case in his relationship with the late Connor's sister, where she feels less like a rounded human being so much as a girl-shaped-object for Evan to fixate on. This is by no means the only show ever to have an underwritten female lead, but it's a pity that a show in the 21st century still struggles to actually give a female character an interior life.  

But Bryant's production takes full advantage of the material to present a big scale musical that pushes just a little bit deeper than normal - no, it's not at the level of "Fun Home" or "Next to Normal" (to name two of my favourite psychological musicals of recent years), but it does have a certain power to it that works.