Dear Evan Hansen at Aarhus Theatre is a musical that touches deeply

There are performances you go into and performances you leave. Dear Evan Hansen is the latter. When the lights came on in Aarhus Theatre's main hall, I sat for a moment and thought that I wasn't quite ready to go home yet. I just had to let it sink in.

I wasn't in the best of spirits that night. I had a persistent cough and had to leave the theater twice during the performance. But even with those gaps, the performance filled me so much that I went home with a lump in my throat and a conversation I wanted to continue all night.

A young man who doesn't know what to do with himself

Evan Hansen is seventeen, lonely, and suffers from social anxiety. He lives alone with his mother, who loves him but is away most of the time because she works. His therapist has asked him to write letters to himself, little encouragements that start with “Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day, and here’s why.” But the letters never really hit the mark. It’s hard to encourage yourself when you don’t know where you belong.

When a Connor, who is Evan's classmate, commits suicide, the friend's parents find one of Evan's letters in the deceased's pocket. They think it's a farewell message to Evan, and that their son and Evan were best friends. They never were. But when meeting the grieving family, Evan won't say it out loud. He doesn't want to disappoint them. He doesn't want to ruin the moment when a family finally sees him, listens to him, and wants him home for dinner.

And then the lie begins to grow.

A lie that becomes the truth

This is where the show brings up its own dilemma. “A lie that becomes the truth,” it says at one point, and that’s exactly what happens. Evan invents emails he and Connor wrote to each other. He tells stories of friendships that never happened. And every time he tells a new version, he becomes a little more convinced that it’s true. Or at least that it deserves to be true.

As a spectator, you know this is going to end badly. You can see it coming from afar. And yet you sit there and support him. That's what's beautiful and scary about the show. You understand why he does what he does, even though you know it's wrong.

Thorbjørn Hedegaard lifts the entire performance

I have rarely experienced an actor who is so completely at one with a role. Thorbjørn Hedegaard is Evan Hansen in a way that makes you unable to imagine anyone else in the role. His facial expressions, his way of fumbling with the words, the way his body doesn't quite know what to do with itself. It's all there from the first second.

You can crawl into him through his eyes. You feel his anxiety when he has to say something out loud in front of the others. You feel his joy, awkward and cautious, when he is allowed to be part of a family for the first time. When he is comforted by his mother at one point, I could see that his eyes became moist, and it gave me a lump in my throat.

He draws you into every emotion, without seeming the least bit theatrical.

It was also very clear when the performance ended with a standing ovation, and every time Thorbjørn came back on stage, the audience clapped extra hard. We had all felt the same.

A strong young ensemble around him

Although Thorbjørn carries the show, he is not alone. Around him is a team of young actors, each of whom makes their character a person you can look up to. That is one of the show's greatest strengths. You can see a part of yourself in several of them, no matter where you are in life.

Malaika B. Mosendane plays Zoe, the sister of the deceased, and she does the balancing act of mourning a brother you had a difficult relationship with, without it becoming either sentimental or harsh. Viktor Pascoe Medom as Connor, the brother who is gone, but who still fills the room all the time. Kevan Nirwan Soliman as Jared, who uses humor as a shield in the way many teenagers do, and who actually makes the audience laugh several times along the way. Andrea Øst Birkkjær as Alana, the talented girl who wants to be everywhere at once and uses her performance as a way to belong.

And then there's Isa Marie Henningsen as Evan's mother, Marie Dalsgaard and Carsten Svendsen as Connor's parents. They're the ones who carry the adult pain in the show, and they do so with an honesty that hurts to watch because it's so recognizable.
It's the overall performance that makes Dear Evan Hansen more than a story about one young man. It becomes a story about an entire generation, and about the adults who stand by and try to reach out.

When you, as a parent, have a very special feeling

As a parent, I could sense something special along the way. Evan's mother is a single mother, she works too much, and she doesn't quite know how to reach her son. She becomes practical because it's easier than being clueless. Have you been to the therapist? Have you written the letter? It's not because she doesn't love him. It's because she doesn't know what else to do.

I recognized that feeling. Not as myself directly, but as that feeling every parent knows when you are faced with a child who is having a hard time and you can't get to the heart of it. The play shows that feeling without judgment. Neither Evan nor the mother are made villains. They are just two people fighting separately.

And then there's the scene where the mother actually gets through. I won't reveal that scene. But that's where the crying really comes in, and I was far from the only one in the audience who shed a tear.

A performance that kept filling

On the way home through Aarhus we talked about it. About Evan, about his mother, about how vulnerable it is to be young right now with social media that can both lift and crush you in less than a day. About how a small lie can grow into something that can't be stopped. About how hard it is to be the one who doesn't feel like you fit in anywhere.

It's rare that a performance gives us so much to talk about. We were thoughtful, and we had the feeling of having experienced something special. That's what I look for when I go to the theater. That feeling that something sticks.

Tomorrow will be a good day.

I won't give away the ending. Just say it's not a wrapped gift. It's calmer than that, more gentle. At the end, Evan sits and reads his new letter to himself, and the letter begins with "Dear Evan Hansen, tomorrow will be a good day."

It's not a conclusion to an ending, but a hope. And it's exactly the kind of sentence you need when you leave the theater late one night in Aarhus.

Dear Evan Hansen is playing at Aarhus Teater's Store Scene until June 6, 2026. If you know the feeling of not quite belonging, or if you know someone who does, go there. It's a performance that will stick with you.

The book and the movie, if you want more

If the show gets you hooked and you want to delve deeper into the story, Evan Hansen is also available as a novel and as a film. The book “Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel” by Val Emmich was published in 2018 and tells the story from Evan’s own perspective with added depth.
The film came out in 2021 and stars Ben Platt, who originally played Evan on Broadway. Both are great ways to continue the story.

Practical information:

• Performance: Dear Evan Hansen
• Location: Aarhus Theatre, Main Stage
• Game period: April 30 to June 11, 2026
• Duration: approx. 2 hours and 50 minutes incl. break
• Language: The performance is sung and performed in Danish.
• Starring: Thorbjørn Hedegaard
• Staging: Sara Cronberg
• Original work: Musical with Broadway premiere in 2016, screenplay by Steven Levenson, music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul
• Tickets: aarhusteater.dk