Coming of Age

I have nightmares of being a mother at 7 years old / I want to ask my mother if she feels like me too.

In “American Cherry,” the typical coming-of-age story takes a dark twist as the protagonists’ growing romance is distorted into something more sinister, and ultimately deadly.

With masterful command over these personal nuances, author Steve Levenson, composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and the 2023 touring cast of “Dear Evan Hansen” bring the audience to tears on several occasions.

Aren’t we all just a huddled mass of copycats, anxious that the identities we’ve cobbled together will one day burst at the seams?

I went about my day carrying what felt like a dirty little secret, that I was craving a celebration I didn’t know how to ask for.

While Raiff’s penchant for earnestness remains a grounding force behind “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” the novelty of his sincerity and emotional subjectivity has mostly worn off, his portrayal of liminality more vaguely delineated and less insightful and critically self-reflexive than it purports to be.

That was when my dad looked at me and said: “You just need five seconds of insane courage, and you can do anything.”

My first kiss should have been an innocent moment with the boy I spent my freshman year of high school crushing on. But instead, it released your memory.

I did, in fact, find myself vulnerably confronting my religion — with a cross dangling above my face, connected to a chain around the neck of a classmate.