It’s already been a hard morning for Beau Woodbridge. He’s had several breakdowns. Or, rather, the same one on repeat.
The actor is deep into rehearsals for the Australian premiere of Dear Evan Hansen, the hit Broadway musical by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, a coproduction by Sydney Theatre Company and Michael Cassel Group that opens at Sydney’s Roslyn Packer Theatre this month before seasons in Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide. He’s playing the titular lead: an anxious teenager who, through a mix-up and misunderstanding – and a not-so-little white lie – has a hero’s mantle placed on him by his high school peers after the suicide of another student, Connor, who they believe was Evan’s friend.
Today Woodbridge (the son of doubles tennis champ Todd Woodbridge) has been working on one of Evan’s big numbers, Words Fail, in which he confesses all to Connor’s shocked and disbelieving family. If you know the show, or have seen the 2021 movie version, you’ll remember this moment. It’s a hard one.
Moments before this interview, Woodbridge was acting to an empty dining table – emoting to the air – as the rest of the cast were given the morning off. “It’s a big song,” he says. “What I really love about Dear Evan Hansen is that each song has a great big story and they are really demanding technically, so with songs like Words Fail, I know I have to pace myself. There’s something like 14 or 15 songs in the show and I lead 11 or 12 of them. It’s quite a heavy load.”
Woodbridge, who landed the role while in his graduate year at the Royal Academy of Music in London, is also feeling the weight of expectation. The title role in Dear Evan Hansen is synonymous in the minds of its fans with the performance by Ben Platt, who won a Tony in 2017 for his performance on Broadway and starred in the film – to the chagrin of some, who thought that Platt (aged 27 at the time) was too old to play a teenager. He copped a pasting on socials.
Aged 22, the soft-faced Woodbridge might be considered more “teen adjacent”.
“I was lucky enough to actually see the original production on Broadway when I was quite young, about 14, and I saw Ben as Evan,” he says. “I think there are definitely parts of his Evan that have stayed in my head but I don’t think too much about stuff like that. It’s fun for me to approach it from the text [and] from the score, and really honour that. I definitely have my own version of Evan and my own idea of the social anxiety he experiences.”
Is that something from Woodbridge’s imagination? “I do have anxiety myself in certain areas and I’ve definitely been using that to fuel some of the decisions I’m making,” he says. “For me, it’s something that tends to manifest physically, you know? It sort of drops into my stomach. So that’s something I’ve been playing with, gathering and releasing that tension in your gut.”
Some of Evan’s anxiety might be the result of his hyper-awareness, Woodbridge says. “Dean [Bryant, the director] and I have been developing his idea that Evan isn’t one of those socially anxious people who wants to avoid people and issues. Instead, we see him as hyper-aware, really good at reading situations. He’s just unable to interact with them. [What] I really want to show in my Evan is this longing for connection.”
Bryant says putting on a new Australian production of a much-loved musical doesn’t faze him; he did the same for Fun Home in 2021. “That show was beloved as well, not maybe as much of a blockbuster as Dear Evan Hansen, but still, so many people had seen it on Broadway or in London. I have the same approach I would take to any classic or even new work, which is, what does it feel like the writers were intending to do? What does it feel like it’s saying about mental health in 2024 and the way teenagers and parents talk in 2024, while using the set text that you’re given?”
In his staging, “The [theatre] space feels like Evan’s mind, compressing him, with screens used sparingly, swamping the characters, much like we experience social media [and the internet],” he says.
Natalie O’Donnell, who plays Connor’s mother Cynthia, has two teenagers of her own and says she’s particularly struck by the authenticity of Bryant’s production. “What I think this show captures beautifully is the way the teenagers engage with each other, and how conversations between the parents and teenagers sit in a very different world. For me, that really resonated, and I don’t say that lightly, because I’m a mum seeing my kids do the same.”
Woodbridge saw the Broadway production with his own mother. “I remember both of us turning to each other at the end and we were both in tears. You come away wanting to talk, just to let them know you appreciate them being there. You’ve watched these characters moving through all these moral and ethical grey areas and it’s so real, so like the world we are in every day. It’s really moving to see a musical that is not all glitz and glam.”
Dear Evan Hansen is at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, from 12 October; Arts Centre Melbourne from 14 December; Canberra Theatre Centre from 27 February 2025; and Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, from 3 April
