With the six-time Tony Award-winning musical, Dear Evan Hansen, coming from Broadway to the stages of the Kimmel Cultural Campus’ Forrest Theater, from now until August 28, there’s something you should know about the Philly-ness of it all.
The most famous local legend of the emotional, high school-driven Ben Platt-starring musical is that it was penned by Ardmore native, Benj Pasek, and his longtime writing partner Justin Paul, and its story of a suicidal youth affecting the life of a high school senior struck with social anxiety was inspired by Pasek’s time at Friends’ Central School.
Before the renown of writing award-winning music for films such as La La Land and The Greatest Showman, and spreading their reach into serving as producers for the Broadway production of Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning new musical A Strange Loop, Pasek was basing his writing on his time at the private, Quaker school in Wynnewood, Lower Merion Township. And though no scene or song speaks to something local, it’s in the pores of the score and every song.
Then there is the fact that the touring roadshow Evan Hansen in Dear Evan Hansen, Anthony Norman, spent plenty of time in Philadelphia as part of HBO’s Emmy-winning Mare of Eastown drama, playing Nathan Ford throughout the 2021 mini-series.
“I learned to love Philly quickly,” said Norman, from an opening night rehearsal at the Forrest with his stage mom, Coleen Sexton – who also has local roots. “I’m a Jersey girl,” she says when I ask her about her favorite songs in the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack. “The second act and the rock songs I get to sing…” that’s the Springsteen/Bon Jovi in Sexton.
As for Norman, who shot HBO’s Mare of Eastown between the Sun Center in Chester and on location throughout Delaware County, the young actor is pleased to be back in town. “I love South Philly and I want to check out a 76ers game. This has become like a second home. I’d love to buy a house here.”
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