“Dear Evan Hansen,” a modern musical masterpiece, the significance of being made into a movie during the coronavirus pandemic

A collaboration between some of today's best writers

Although "Dear Evan Hansen" was highly praised on Broadway, unfortunately it has never been performed professionally in Japan. So before introducing the film version, let's start by introducing the creators of this stage play.

The music for this film, which won a Tony Award and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album, was written by the up-and-coming musical duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. They are known among film fans for their lyrics for " La La Land " (2016) and " The Greatest Showman " (2017). The pair came up with the idea for this film in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the spread of social media, and the sudden increase in suicides, which had become a social problem.

In 2011, Pasek and Paul met writer Steven Levenson and began preparing for the film in earnest. Levenson wrote the drama Masters of Sex (2013-2016) and Fosse & Verdon: A Broadway Story (2019) starring Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams. He also wrote the screenplay for Hamilton director Lin-Manuel Miranda's directorial debut Tick, Tick... BOOM! (2021).

The play they created, Dear Evan Hansen, premiered in Washington DC in 2015 after a workshop in 2014, and made its way to Broadway in 2016. The hugely successful production is an important contemporary musical on a par with the social phenomenon Hamilton, and it marked a turning point in the careers of Pasek & Paul and Levenson.

The person who was chosen to adapt this famous stage play into a film was Stephen Chbosky, a writer, director and screenwriter. Chbosky, known for "The Perks of Being a Wallflower " (2012) and " Wonder " (2017), is known as a master of human drama, carefully depicting stories of teenagers and families. However, since the tone of "Dear Evan Hansen" is somewhat different from Chbosky's style, this staffing was a bit of a surprise. If we were to compare this to a Japanese case, it would be a collaboration between two unique writers, similar to Kudo Kankuro's adaptation of Higashino Keigo's " Ryusei no Kizuna " into a drama.

Dear Evan Hansen as a Stephen Chbosky movie