Roxy’s Downtown jumps on chance to stage ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ in Wichita
The opportunity to stage “Dear Evan Hansen,” the Broadway musical that won six Tony Awards in 2017, was such a feat for Rick Bumgardner that the Roxy’s Downtown artistic director scrapped his original plans for the May slot to schedule it as soon as the rights became available.
“One of our goals is always to be one of the first theaters to present something to the city of Wichita, and this was something we wanted to hop on,” said Bumgardner, who shelved original plans for the musical “Parade” to be able to stage “Evan,” which opens tonight.
Getting to be the first local theater to stage it – although the touring version was at Century II for Broadway in Wichita two years ago – was secondary for Bumgardner to the theme of the musical.
“I think it’s timely, with all the discussion in America about what social media is doing to people,’ he said. “The message of that within the course of this show was something we needed to focus on.”
The themes capture the generation, Bumgardner said.
“It’s about a young man with social anxiety who has a classmate take his own life, and then through an unfortunate series of circumstances where he doesn’t tell the truth, this entire social media blitz happens, and he is found out by the family that he didn’t tell the truth,” he said. “But things happen to change him as an individual, where he had this incredible fear of people and talking, and being liked, and all of that thing that comes with teenage angst.”
Despite its themes of suicide and parental and family dysfunction, Bumgardner said, “You are left with this very uplifting, hopeful message for this young man.”
“Dear Evan Hansen” won Tonys for star Ben Platt, score by Benj Pasewk and Justin Paul (“The Greatest Showman,” “La La Land”) as well as best book and direction, among others.
Bumgardner said he and music director Simon Hill held auditions for what was supposed to be the entire season, and when they changed course for “Evan Hansen,” they knew Xavier Huffman was perfect for the title role.
“I was absolutely wanting this role,” said Huffman, a veteran of six Roxy’s shows who is currently a student at Emporia State University.
Huffman, who has seen YouTube clips of Platt’s performance on Broadway, found that the character is “a lot deeper than what I originally expected.”
“Evan Hansen can definitely come off as a really bad person but learning the story and learning how deep it is, he’s just a confused kid,” he said.
Bumgardner said Evan is one of the most challenging characters for an actor that he has seen.
“Evan is a stream of social consciousness. He goes from one subject to the next, and free-flows his words. The memorization aspect of this is incredibly difficult,” he said, adding that the character is off stage only twice, about 30 seconds each time, enough for a costume change.
“His arc is so great, and (he is) finding his way through that with lines that are nonsensical,” Bumgardner added. “They don’t connect the dots, but he’s doing an amazing, amazing job of that.”
‘DEAR EVAN HANSEN’
When: May 8 to June 13; 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, and alternating Saturdays at 2 p.m.
Where: Roxy’s Downtown, 412 ½ E. Douglas
Tickets: $42, from roxysdowntown.com or 316-265-4400