PMT Mounts the First Regional Production of the Tony Award-Winning Musical
By SHARON EBERSON
Anthony Marino Jr. doesn’t remember the first time he was on a stage. It was more than 25 years ago, and he was 6 weeks old, playing baby Jesus in a play called The Living Christmas Tree, as his parents have told him.
A theater kid from birth, Anthony is part of the showbiz clan of Anthony “Tony” Marino and Renata Marino, who together headed up Stage Right! in Greensburg for more than two decades, when their son played the title role in Billy Elliot, and had roles in American Idiot (Johnny), Footloose (Willard), and Les Miserables (Marius). His parents now run Westmoreland Performing Arts, where his sister, Gia Marino, is a dance teacher and choreographer there.
When the younger Anthony isn’t acting as “tween director” or onstage for his family’s company, he has crossed county lines to work with Pittsburgh CLO and Front Porch Theatricals, and now, as the lead in Pittsburgh Musical Theater’s Dear Evan Hansen.
When Marino auditioned for the musical, he thought he had outgrown the lead role of a troubled teen who gets caught in a web of lies.
“When the first show came out, I was like right in the middle of high school,” Marino recalled. “So I mean, it hit home for me then. And even now, in my mid-20s, it still hits home in a lot of different ways. Actually, I didn’t think at this point in my life I was still an Evan … but deep down, I always felt like I was an Evan.”
Director Tim Seib agreed, and tapped Marino as his lead for the first regional production of Dear Evan Hansen, in PMT’s Gargaro Theater, opening April 30, 2026, in the West End.
Marino will play a teen who gains fame, then infamy, for his viral reaction to the suicide of a classmate named Connor. Evan is recorded while claiming to be Connor’s BFF and promoting the notion, “You Will Be Found,” a message that goes viral. The lies escalate as Evan, a loner living with his hard-working, divorced mother, is embraced by Connor’s family.
“There are layers behind it to make it what it is — it’s lie after lie after lie after lie, but all to actually help this family that is grieving,” Marino said during a Zoom call. “There’s someone that they have just lost, and the fact that Evan was put in that position in the first place, can you really blame him for everything that he does?”
The Tony Award-winning Best Musical of 2017, by the songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, with a Tony-winning book by Steven Levenson, is a contemporary teen drama that deals with mental health, isolation, and the loss of control when something hits social media and takes hold.
“I’m excited for everybody to see this, especially our younger audiences that connect more with some of the subject matter,” Marino said. “I feel like it’ll be a really great release. and a place to make you feel maybe not as alone as you might feel.”
Evan is a long way from Marino’s 2024 gigs in the Pittsburgh Cultural District, as the hilarious Igor, in Pittsburgh CLO’s production of Young Frankenstein, and as Mendel, the rabbi’s son, in the PCLO-Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra collaboration of Fiddler on the Roof.
Igor was comedy gold in Marino’s capable hands. Evan is on another track entirely, and a vocal and emotional challenge for any actor.
“Both are extremely difficult, just in different ways,” Marino said. “With Igor, it was far more physically demanding and character-voice demanding, as to where, I really had to focus on a different part of my voice with Evan. … I really had to keep my body in check with Igor, especially how I was always hunched every day. And with this role, it’s just keeping myself mentally in check, because it’s just a lot to take on mentally, emotionally.”
Director Seib has helped Marino find his way as Evan.
“Tim is wonderful to work with,” the actor said. “He leaves space for me to find what I need to find, but then, giving just the littlest detail, he can really open up the scene in a whole new way. He created a very safe and imaginative environment that feels very free to play.”
“I feel like it’ll be a really great release. and a place to make you feel maybe not as alone as you might feel.”
Anthony Marino Jr. on what
he hopes audiences will take away from “Dear Evan Hansen“
The cast have had just “a peek” at the set as it was being constructed. It will include projections, as is typical for a Dear Evan Hansen production, and “It looks like you’re inside of a computer,” Marino said.
Leading PMT’s Dear Evan Hansen, alongside Marino, are Zanny Laird as Evan’s mother, Heidi; Joshua Clark as Connor, Brett Goodnack and Bre Short as Connor’s parents; and Erin Cain as Zoe, Connor’s sister, along with Evan’s schoolmates, Maya Fullard as Alana, and Maximillian Milligan as Jared. The supporting cast includes Ocean Chang, Joseph Digney, Taylor Terry, Collin Yates, Jake Emmerling, Mary Lamb, Luca Boudreau, Lucy Spang, and Liam Gedris. The production is choreographed by Lucas Fedele, with Dr. Francesca Tortorello providing music direction.
Anthony Marino Jr.’s director for the first role he can recall was his father. Young Anthony played Young Tommy, in The Who’s Tommy, when he was 6. His mother, Renata, played Tommy’s mother.
When he speaks with his parents these days, there may be a back-and-forth about whatever happens to be his current role — Marino can go on forever about character analysis, he said — but mostly, “They’re just like, ‘Come home whenever you can to say hi. We miss you.’”
There was never a question in his mind that he was going to follow in their footsteps, while also creating his own path, one that that has led him to Evan Hansen.
“I think always being immersed in that world just kind of wired my brain in a way that made me know, ‘That’s what I was made to do.’ That’s what I was born to do really,” Marino said. “And I didn’t really have any other thoughts than that, ever. … I want to be a working actor, in whatever capacity that is. I just want to keep creating. I love the art form. It’s in my bloodstream, so I have to do it in some way.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh Musical Theater presents Dear Evan Hansen at the Gargaro Theater, 327 S. Main Street, West End, April 30 – May 24, 2026. Tickets: https://pmt.culturaldistrict.org/production/102545/dear-evan-hansen or call 412-456-6666.
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