Music

Ben Platt, Famously Not A Teen, Is Being Roasted For Playing A Teen In ‘Dear Evan Hansen’

Some real 'Grease' casting going on here.

by Joseph Earp  19 May 2021
Ben Platt in Dear Evan Hansen

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If you, a Broadway neophyte, logged onto the internet this morning, you were probably confusingly greeted by tweet after tweet about some musical named Dear Evan Hansen.

The acclaimed — if controversial — show has made the rounds for half a decade now, but is getting a whole bunch of new mainstream attention thanks to a forthcoming film adaptation. Said movie, directed by Perks of Being a Wallflower‘s Stephen Chbosky, just got a trailer, and goodness gracious, this thing looks wild.

As a tonally muddled property, Dear Evan Hansen is confusing enough as it is. But if you lack the Broadway context, it’s only more so — most people will walk away from the trailer with more questions than answers. So let’s just get right down to sorting out this mess of musical numbers about suicide, shall we?

What Is Dear Evan Hansen?

Dear Evan Hansen tells the story of the titular highschooler, an outcast who suffers from social anxiety. In order to try and learn to love himself and overcome his psychological barriers, Hansen begins writing himself long letters. Only, things go awry when one of these letters falls into the hands of Connor, a young man who then tragically commits suicide.

Given Evan’s letter is on Connor’s person when he dies, the friends and family of the departed young man assume that it is a suicide note addressed to Evan. Suddenly, everyone thinks that Connor and Evan were friends, and so Evan begins retrospectively manufacturing closeness between himself and the relative stranger. Basically, he invents a friendship, spinning a web of lies that eventually — and somewhat predictably — comes crashing down around him. Sort of. (It’s a long, spoiler-filled story.)

If that all sounds like a lot, that’s because the musical famously is.  Though it received critical acclaim across its run, it has its fair share of detractors, critics who take umbrage with the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach to teenage mental illness. For instance, Hilton Als of the New Yorker criticised the show for taking “side trips into tired knee-jerk liberalism and therapeutic healing” and called Dear Evan Hansen an example of “pop psychology.”

Why Is Everyone Roasting Ben Platt?

Amongst the criticisms of the trailer floating around online — many of them admittedly light-hearted — the biggest is over the casting of Ben Platt, who plays Hansen. Platt has actually performed the role before; he won great acclaim for his portrayal of the teen throughout the Broadway run.

The only thing is, Platt is defiantly not a teenager. To say he doesn’t look the part is something of an understatement: the man is a 27-year-old trying to fit in amongst a bunch of teenagers. Unsurprisingly then, Platt’s casting has become a source of mockery online, prompting a raft of memes.

Not that all this attention will likely hurt the movie adaptation. The thing’s wild enough that it will surely attract a raft of curiosity watches — everyone’s waiting to see if Chbosky can pull this mess of styles and tones off. Guess we’ll find out soon: Dear Evan Hansen hits cinemas this September.