Dear Evan Hansen - Noel Coward

I know that I did, earlier in this thread, defend him as not being "too old" for this role on film given the usual average age of a teen in Hollywood casting terms, but my god that hair did him no favours. He would have looked much better if they'd kept his hair straight and maybe grown it out a little.

The weird perm makes him look like a middle-aged man.

Does Sam T do all shows ?

Ok thank you. Have booked a Thursday night *fingers crossed*

Ooooft just read some of the reviews for this and it's being torn apart. Especially the casting of Platt and his performance, which is sad.

It may still make absolute bank at the box office, but unfortunately seems to be a unanimous critical failure.

I suppose sometimes a great leading stage performance just doesn't translate to screen. Makes you wonder doesn't it? Would Merman have been great on screen as Rose? Would Carol Channing actually have been a great screen Dolly?

Definitely got better as it went on. I think it just took me quite a while to "buy into" it. The Murphy unit still feel very solid. I do like the little changes to plot they made, the fact that Alana was much more fleshed out (although at the expense of Jared, it must be said). The final third of the piece is its strongest. Without giving any spoilers away I did feel Evan had more "redemption" here than in the stage play.

How much of this was sung live? Some songs felt live, some felt played in.

The big emotional pivot moments of You Will Be Found and Words Fail hit the spot - Only Us had a very different dynamic here due to the changes, but it works.

Platt I thought did a solid job here - doesn't deserve the slating he's had for the performance (although jury is still out as to whether he should have been, ahem, cast, or not). Stand out for me was Kaitlyn Dever's Zoe - this version gave her much more room to breathe than the stage version does.

Some of Evan's songs definitely sounded live. Words Fail, for sure, and If I Could Tell Her as well. Basically any song that didn't have lots of cuts or movement in it.

I still say that Evan's actions aren't deliberately deceitful or malicious. He doesn't set out to hurt anyone. It's a misunderstanding that he should've corrected but it got out of hand too quickly, and then he panicked. Yes he shouldn't have created all of the emails, but again it wasn't done to hurt the Murphys. Then once he felt connected to them, he didn't want to risk losing it all. He's naive and foolish and an idiot, but he's not a bad person. The Murphys were broken, even before Connor's death, and Evan's actions (however ill-advised) did help them to heal.

Very true about Evan's actions. He's caught up in a bizarre situation and does what he thinks is best by letting the family believe the letter is what they think it is. And let's be honest about his initial lie, how many of us would actually turn around and say "no, sorry, I just fancy your daughter and your son killed himself with that letter in his pocket"? I suspect very few of us who were in a position to write that letter in the first place would have anything like the confidence required to put them right at that moment in the headteacher's office. After that, everything snowballs. The email writing is the big mess up - but again that's him trying to protect the fact he lied initially (and not reveal the "weird sex letter" as Jared puts it).

What I did like in the film was how the "suicide note" release feels much more regretful from all sides - on stage it feels like Evan regrets this predominantly because it's messed up his relationship with Zoe, but on film you see the impact on the family much more and consequently redials what we see as Evan's own feelings. Alana seems much more a balanced and considerate character on film too, you can see her wondering whether to release that image or not, and regretting the impact it has very quickly afterwards. I also think the relationship arc with Zoe makes far more sense here, and removes that predatory angle of Evan. 

I genuinely have never had an issue with the structure of it on stage - however now seeing the film (and letting myself digest it somewhat) I do think the film has the better final act. Several reasons: there's more effort to put right the mistakes on Evan's side, we learn more about why the truth never came out (which demonstrates the Murphy's are still empathetic to Evan), we see more of how things are at school (including Evan's relationship with Zoe) and Evan doesn't miraculously get forgiven for no other reason than time heals. Time does heal, but not usually as much as the stage version wants us to believe!

Some sections of the film are still pretty cringeworthy though, I don't need to see Evan galloping in the woods any more.

I’m starting to think that DEH won’t age at all well, and won’t enter the canon of classic musicals. Society has been so self obsessed and neurotic this past 5 years that something equally as self absorbed has found favour. It spoke to me for a bit, but now I find it a bit forced. I’m going again in December to try and connect a bit more.

Now we know why OG West cast member David Breeds isn't returning. He's sharing the lead role of Christopher, in the upcoming UK tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time x

Metro gave the film a 2 star rating today.

Because his dad is the producer….

From Vanity Fair...

"Chbosky said. “His understanding of the character is so complete and so profound. I couldn’t imagine anybody else playing it. It’s his part. I felt very strongly about it. And to me it was never even a consideration.”