By Sara Bright
Ben Platt is coming to London.
It’s happening in July. But he isn’t doing the Palladium. He isn’t taking over the Adelphi or trying to fill the cavernous space of the Drury Lane. No. He’s going to the Menier Chocolate Factory.
If you know the London theatre scene, you know this is a flex.
The Menier is tiny. It’s a bunker. It holds about 180 people if everyone breathes in. It’s tucked away in Southwark, smelling vaguely of damp concrete and expensive coffee. Putting a Broadway star of Platt’s magnitude – Tony winner, movie star, the guy who made a generation of teenagers weep over a blue polo shirt – into a room that size is… well, it’s a choice. It’s a statement.
It says: “I don’t need the money. I need the credibility.”
Or maybe it just says he wants to be heard without a microphone the size of a fist strapped to his forehead for once.
The “Evan Hansen” Hangover
We have to talk about the elephant in the room. Or the teenager in the room.
For a long time, Ben Platt was Dear Evan Hansen. He originated the role, he won the Tony, he owned it. And then the movie happened. And let’s be honest, the discourse got ugly. People were mean about the casting, the wig, the whole “27-year-old playing a high schooler” thing. It felt like the industry turned on him a bit.
So, this move? Coming to London to do a niche, intimate, two-hander musical about gay romance in the 1960s? It feels like a palate cleanser. It feels like an artist trying to scrape off the barnacles of a massive commercial juggernaut and remember what it feels like to just… act.
The show is called Midnight at The Never Get.
I’ve heard the buzz about this piece for a few years now. It’s been kicking around Off-Broadway, doing the rounds in the States. It’s written by Mark Sonnenblick. The premise is intriguing, if a little familiar. It’s 1965. New York City. A cabaret singer and a songwriter fall in love.
But it’s 1965. So they can’t really be in love. Not in public. Not on stage.
They perform together at a nightclub called The Never Get. They sing love songs to each other, but they have to code it. They have to pretend it’s about a girl, or just a generic “you.” It’s a show about the performance of the closet.
The Intimacy Trap
Here is why the Menier is the only place this could work.
If you put this show on a big proscenium stage, it dies. It relies on the vibe of a smoky, illegal basement club. It needs to feel illicit. You need to feel like the police could raid the place at any minute.
David Cromer is directing. This is the good news. The really good news.
Cromer directed The Band’s Visit. He understands silence. He understands how to make a small moment feel huge. He doesn’t do razzle-dazzle; he does emotional claustrophobia. If anyone can make us believe that Ben Platt is a struggling nightclub singer in 1965 Village, it’s Cromer.
He’s going to transform the Menier into the club. I imagine we’ll be sitting at cabaret tables. The lighting will be low. It will be immersive, but not in that annoying “immersive theatre” way where actors touch you and make you wear a mask. Just immersive in the sense of shared air.
The Nostalgia Problem
I have a slight reservation, though.
We are seeing a lot of “gay tragedy in the past” stories lately. It’s a genre. Fellow Travelers. My Policeman. We seem obsessed with looking back at the bad old days.
There is a danger that it becomes a bit… cozy? Is that the word? We sit in our comfortable 2026 seats, safe in the knowledge that we have marriage equality (mostly) and PrEP, and we weep for the poor men in suits who couldn’t hold hands. It can feel a bit like poverty tourism, but for oppression.
However, Sonnenblick’s score is supposed to be fantastic. It’s a pastiche of the Great American Songbook – that Judy Garland, Sinatra, lush 60s pop sound – but with a modern, ironic twist.
And Platt can sing. God, he can sing.
Whatever you think of his acting choices in the past, the man has an instrument. It’s a voice that can do that specific Jewish-Broadway vibrato that just cuts right through you. In a room the size of the Menier, unamplified (or lightly amplified), it’s going to be overpowering.
The “Once-in-a-Generation” Hype
Sonnenblick calls Platt a “once-in-a-generation performer” in the press release.
Standard PR fluff? Maybe. But also, maybe not.
There are very few actors who can bridge the gap between “technical perfection” and “emotional mess.” Platt does that. He sings perfectly, but he looks like he’s falling apart. That tension is what makes him interesting.
And he’s calling this his “first wholly original musical since Dear Evan Hansen.”
That’s a big claim. It puts a lot of weight on The Never Get. It suggests he thinks this is the successor. Not Parade (which he did on Broadway recently to great acclaim), which was a revival. This is new. This is his creation, in a way.
The Ticket Scramble
Let’s be practical for a second. Getting tickets for this is going to be a bloodbath.
The run is short. July 20th to September 12th. That’s barely two months. In a 180-seat theatre. Do the maths. That’s roughly… what, 10,000 tickets total? For the whole run?
There are more Ben Platt fans in a single London postcode than that.
It’s going to be the “I was there” ticket of the summer. The kind of thing people will lie about having seen at dinner parties for the next five years. “Oh yes, Ben was transcendent, I was sitting three feet away, I saw the sweat on his brow.”
Why It Matters
So, why should we care? Beyond the celebrity casting?
Because London theatre needs this energy right now. We’ve been a bit safe lately. A lot of jukebox musicals. A lot of movie adaptations. (Yes, I know, I’m complaining about safety while talking about a show starring a movie star, the irony isn’t lost on me).
But Midnight at The Never Get sounds like a piece of chamber theatre. It sounds like it cares about the words.
It’s also a reminder that the Menier Chocolate Factory punches so far above its weight it’s ridiculous. This is the place that launched the Color Purple revival, the Merrily We Roll Along revival. They know how to take a musical, strip it down to its bones, and make it hurt.
I’m sceptical about the 60s nostalgia. I’m wary of the “tortured gay romance” tropes.
But I’m also going to be refreshing the ticket page the second they go on sale.
Because the combination of Ben Platt’s voice, David Cromer’s direction, and that tiny, dark, damp room in Southwark? That is a recipe for something combustible.
It might be pretentious. It might be indulgent. But it won’t be boring. And in the current climate, “not boring” is the highest compliment I can pay.
Welcome to London, Ben. Hope you like the Tube.
