Theater review: Tour finds the truth in ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ at St. Paul’s Ordway

I have a confession to make. I really wasn’t looking forward to the touring production of “Dear Evan Hansen” that’s landed at St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theater for the week.

The last time a tour came through presenting this winner of the 2017 “Best Musical” Tony, I found the show exasperating when not infuriating. Here was a musical comedy built upon a foundation of mental illness and suicide that came off as disrespectful to anyone who’s lived with either. And the cloying, sound-alike songs made it that much more difficult to endure.

So imagine my surprise when the Crossroads Live production currently on the Ordway boards resulted in my totally rethinking this musical. Thanks to a committed cast – anchored by the invariably excellent Michael Fabisch as the title character – and a directorial tandem that clearly recognized the musical’s shortcomings and set out to remedy them, I came away feeling this show to be an unqualified success.

Sure, there gets to be a certain sameness about the songs, almost all of them folk-rock ballads driven by an acoustic guitar or piano and rumbling drums, occasionally underlining a sad mood with a suitably melancholy cello. But this cast sings them with such passionate power as to disarm any cynicism.

And speaking of cynicism, “Dear Evan Hansen” can carry plenty of its own if not crafted with a compassionate touch. For here is the story of Evan, a bullied high school junior with severe social anxiety and a crush on that girl in the jazz band. His aversion to conflict leads him to lie when confronted with questions about why that girl’s older brother had a note addressed to our protagonist on him when he took his life. Evan’s stories of an imaginary friendship bring salve to the surviving family, but end up at the center of a viral internet hoax run amok.

Michael Fabisch and Bre Cade in the North American touring production of “Dear Evan Hansen.” (Evan Zimmerman / MurphyMade)

Perhaps Tony voters saw it as the first Broadway musical to address the internet’s place in modern life, for good and ill, especially among teenagers. But it’s to this production’s credit that it cuts through the clamor emanating from our devices and recognizes face-to-face dialogue as where the really important stuff happens.

It’s clear that directors Danny Sharron and Mark Myars get that, and Myars has tweaked Danny Mefford’s original Broadway choreography just enough to raise the emotional stakes and emphasize each character’s humanity. A lived-in feel comes through in both the totally believable conversations authored by Steve Levenson and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul’s dripping-with-sincerity songs.

And the key reason is Michael Fabisch. He and the directors have chosen to bring as much genuineness as possible to Evan’s mental illness, from his almost incomprehensibly rapid-fire monologues to a silent onstage anxiety attack that created a hear-a-pin-drop moment at the Ordway Tuesday. And Fabisch displays a deep understanding of the style of from-the-heart acoustic pop Pasek and Paul have created, bringing intimacy to each song with his emotive tenor.

But everyone in the eight-member cast has created a convincing character, each seizing upon song as a conduit for their internal conflicts. And kudos to music director Michael Hopewell and the eight-piece band for suffusing the score with so much energy. They help make this production so much better than I thought it had a right to be.