Review: Minnesota native electrifies as the star of the Broadway tour of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’

It’s always thrilling to see a Minnesotan killing it under the Broadway tour lights.

Buffalo, Minn.’s, own Michael Fabisch, a Performing Institute of Minnesota Arts High School grad, delivers a performance to savor in the title role of “Dear Evan Hansen,” which is up through Sunday at St. Paul’s Ordway Center.

The actor squirms like an eel in the emotional muck of an in isolated adolescent whose yearning for connection leads him to lie his way, by omission and commission, into hero status. Emotive, eruptive and tangled in his character’s ethical morass, Fabisch is electric in this must-see “Hansen.”

Fabisch’s palpable performance helps the show resonate beyond a personal story into something bigger. For the question that hangs over “Hansen” — if lies are a comfort, what is the cost of putting off the truth — is one that can be extrapolated onto other areas.

The composing team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul won the 2017 best musical Tony for “Hansen,” which starred Ben Platt. The musical’s emo-light rock score seems as urgent as ever.

When “Hansen” opens, Evan is at his computer surrounded by a forest of screens. (The production, based on Michael Greif’s original Broadway staging, has no set to speak of, just a cluttered mediascape that heightens Evan’s loneliness.)

Evan’s over-stretched single mom Heidi (Bre Cade) checks on him to see if he’s writing the cheer-up letters to himself that the therapist recommended. But Evan is a typical teen who doesn’t want her to know what he’s doing as he reaches out to folks, including Jared Kleinman (terrific Gabriel Vernon Nunag), someone quick to note that theirs is an obligatory friendship based on family connections.

After Evan’s bully, Connor Murphy (Alex Pharo), is found after a tragedy with letters that the anxious high schooler had written to himself, Connor’s parents assume that he and Evan were secret best friends.

Evan enlists Jared to build on that misconception and things quickly escalate as the Murphys believe that Connor’s life was not as horrible as they thought. Schoolmate Alana Beck (urgent and earnest Makena Jackson) also steps up as she seeks to raise money and use Connor’s death for good.

“Hansen” is a small musical with just eight actors, but it doesn’t lose its intimacy on the Ordway’s large stage. That’s partly because of Michael Hopewell’s deft and briskly conducted orchestra, Japhy Weideman’s lighting, Peter Nigrini’s projections, and, especially, this cast. The ensemble injects stirring emotion in numbers such as “Requiem,” “Disappear” and “For Forever,” one of Evan’s big numbers.

Pharo drops deadpan wit as Connor, who comes back to life to offer advice and to serve as a funny puppet manipulated by Jared.

And the actors playing the Murphy family (Hatty Ryan King as love interest Zoe, Caitlin Sams as mom Cynthia and Jeff Brooks as dad Larry) never get ahead of themselves, bottling up the tension as the family leans into its needs for solace.

Sure, “Hansen” bombed as a film. But a native Minnesotan shows at the Ordway why this musical is most at home in the theater.

When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 1:30 & 7 p.m. Sun.

Where: Ordway Center, 345 Washington St., St. Paul.

Tickets: $45-$60. 651-224-4222 or Ordway.org