(upbeat music) - Pioneer Theatre Company presents the Utah premiere of "Dear Evan Hansen," a powerful musical exploring identity, belonging, and a search for connection, and here to tell us more is Joshua Black.

Hey, Joshua, it's so good to have you back again.

- Always good to be here, thanks for having me.

- A pleasure to have you.

People are so excited about this six-time Tony-winning musical.

- It's huge, it's a big one, it's a big one for us to get.

I know the tour has come through Salt Lake, but this is actually the first time a Utah-based theater company has been granted the rights to produce "Dear Evan Hansen," so we're excited to put our own stamp on it and it's a unique one, we're very excited.

- Oh, it's great, it's great, so who are you bringing in?

- So we have a newcomer named Kyle Dalsimer in the title role, but as per usual, we do have some good Broadway heavy hitters.

We brought in Donna Vivino, plays Heidi Hanson, Evan's mother.

She is probably well-known to any Utahan who has listened to the original Broadway cast recording of "Les Miserable."

She's young Cosette, she was eight years old and made her Broadway debut at eight singing "Castle on a Cloud."

And then we also have Andrew Samonsky, who has a, I mean, just a eternal list of Broadway credits, national tour credits.

He's actually also an adjunct professor of theater up here at the U.

- Ah, great, great.

- Yes, he's a great talent.

- Okay, and talk about the score.

- The score is amazing.

It's by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote "The Greatest Showman" songs.

I mean, those are earworms I cannot get out of my head.

as of the "Dear Evan Hansen" songs, as well as the score for "La La Land," which I think they won an Oscar for, so.

- Oh yeah, I know, and people love the music to this.

- Oh yeah,, it's great.

It's just hit after hit, and bring some Kleenex, that's all I have to say.

- All right, all right.

Okay, just a brief overview of the plot for people who don't know about it.

- So I don't want to go into too many spoilers, and it's a tricky plot to explain without doing that, but Evan Hansen is a socially awkward teenager who finds himself, through a tragedy, in a situation where he's in over his head, and a lot of that is exacerbated by social media.

So that's the- - Very timely.

Very timely, too.

- Extremely timely.

All right, well, thank you for being here.

Thanks.

- Of course.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming production of "Dear Evan Hansen" coming to Pioneer Theatre, October 24th to November 8th.

To find out about tickets and more, go to pioneertheatre, r-e.org.

That's pioneertheatre.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact."

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